John

I'm aiming to be mobile on the 11th of November with white light solar setup in the boot of the car and a tankfull of petrol ready to seek out somewhere clear. Currently the forecast here for the 11th is very mixed so I suspect being mobile and flexible is going to be key to getting any views. Just now the forecasts look slightly better further south so I'd be heading down to Devon I reckon.

Maybe the other X and L as well ?

The Meade 114 EQ1 B seems to use a mount which is a clone of the Skywatcher EQ1. Right ascension drive motors are still available for the EQ1: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SkyWatcher-R-A-Economy-Motor-Drive-For-EQ1-Mount-UK-Stock/333169557122?hash=item4d9273fe82:g:agQAAOSwrSpdIm3y

Our Yaris has a facility where the rear seats slide forwards to create a much larger boot area. With this feature I guess that a Flextube 12 would just about fit in.

Thats pretty much what I found when I owned an Intes 6 inch maksutov-newtonan and my ED120 refractor. I was able to try them side by side on a number of occasions and found their performance very similar indeed. The additional aperture of the mak-newt showed deep sky objects a little better although the contrast of the refractor helped get it pretty close on these targets. On double stars, the planets and the moon the two scopes were pretty much neck and neck. In the end I kept the ED120 because it cooled down quite a bit quicker and was easier to mount steadilly. I'm not sure that a 6 inch SCT would have quite kept up with these two though

These were pretty good scopes as long as they were not made in the run up to the Halleys Comet return in 1986. Meade and Celestron relaxed their quality control to get scopes out in the run up to Halley. You will need a dew shield if you don't already have one. SCT's are "dew magnets" with all that glass up the front end. Celestron went through a number of patterns for the secondary screw heads - those hex ones being one of them. They may well be an imperial size. The other thing to check for with those older SCTs is mirror flop where the mirror moves slightly as the scope moves around, affecting the collimation.

A couple of thick washers on either side of the motor frame resting on that "ledge" on the mounting platform might do the trick insead of the spanner I guess ? Moving the gear along the axle to match that of the mount is normal and I had to do that when I fitted the Skywatcher dual drive set to my Vixen GP.

Lovely ! It's good to have these reminders from foreign parts of what these astro favourites look like - I'm beginning to forget with all the cloud and rain here

Depends on the size of your rucksack ........

The Rowan AZ100 is certainly portable - the mount head weighs 8.5kg. I can move the Berlebach Unit 28 tripod and the AZ100 head around in one piece fairly easily. I would not want to climb a flight of stairs with it though. Otherwise it would tick your boxes well I would have thought.

It might be better to hang on to your Tasco 130mm and see if we can help you get more out of that while you save up to allow a larger step up to the next scope ? To see some meaningfull improvement you are going to need to increase the aperture by at least 50-70mm I think and your budget will strugle to deliver that as it currently stands, especially with the other features you are hoping for.

Bristol Astronomical Society are holding a Young Persons Astronomy Course running over 4 weeks and aimed at the 9-12 year old age group and based in central Bristol. More details can be found in this PDF poster including a link to the Eventbrite booking page: Nov 2019 YP Astronomy Course Poster.pdf The course starts on the 8th November.

Some light dust on the primary won't affect the views at all. If you want to remove it and can get near the mirror, a manually operated "hurricane" blower seems to be the best tool. I use one like this: https://www.wexphotovideo.com/matin-hurricane-blower-1028568/?mkwid=suvkiEYmP_dc&pcrid=310558796614&kword=&match=&plid=&product=1028568&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-pzQ54bH5QIVAojVCh3yZQaxEAQYBSABEgLdY_D_BwE Best not touch the primary mirror by using a duster and suchlike.

Lovely shots Stu Unfortunately here the it's a Heavy Cloud > Moon > Jupiter conjunction so I'll have to enjoy your pics instead !

Just a quick update on the Rowan AZ100 mount. You will, recall that @Stu and myself now have pre-production units of this mount for testing. Trials that I have done and that Dave Rose has done at Rowan Astronomy (both using 130mm refractors as it happens) have showed the AZ100 to be a really sturdy and well engineered mount capable of dealing with large, heavy optical tubes and long ones as well. The motion of the mount is very smooth around both axes and the tension is highly adjustable using the tension knobs fitted to both altitude and azimuth. The one area which we both felt could be improved was the motion of the axes when driven by the slow motion control cables, especially when the load is unevenly balanced. To this end Dave / Rowan Astronomy have modified the mount in two ways: 1. Damping knobs have been fitted to the azimuth and altitude axes which provide the ability to fine tune the mesh of the worm gears. The 2nd example of the mount that I have been sent has this modification and it has also now been applied to the one that @Stu has as well. 2. Improved worm bearings have been provided to @Stu and myself to replace the original ones. I have performed this straightforward upgrade on my mount and this has resulted in noticably better slow motion control around both axes. @Stu will be upgrading the bearings on his AZ100 on his return from holiday I believe. I now need a clear night or two to test the modified head under the stars but I do have great hopes and expecations for it Dave Rose at Rowan Astronomy has been very responsive, helpful and a pleasure to work with. Thanks again for your patience

Interesting report John - thanks for posting it I have considered the AZ EQ5 as a possible mount for my 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor but I think that scope might just be too much for it. The scope weighs around 1kg more than your ES 127 and (probably more critically) is that much longer being F/9.2 The mount looks great with your ES 5 incher on board

I'd stick to a focal ratio of around F/7 for a holiday scope. Modern ED doublets are really versatile scopes and you have the option of wide field scanning under dark skies with the faster focal ratio. F/7 is so much less demanding to mount than slower refractors as well. I have a Vixen ED102 F/6.5 which can deliver from a 4 degree true field through to 200x plus and it sits very happily on an AZ-4 mount.

Reconciling that with owning an F/15 refractor is must to be tough ! I've yet to try a mount that gives me zero vibrations and immediate damping with my long refractors over 4 inches in aperture. Even the EQ6 / Meade Giant Field tripod (3 inch steel legs !) didn't quite do that.

I had one for a while (not with the Sky Tour). It worked well enough with my Vixen 102mm F/6.5 refractor but was not really stable enough when I tried a longer tubed scope on it (100mm F/9). It's a lovely looking mount but has it's limitations as tube length grows. Not sure if the TV 102 (F/8 ?) will be entirely stable when used at higher magnifications

Despite the issues already mentioned in this thread, its hard to overlook the Skytee II (and clones) when looking for a reasonably heavy duty alt-az mount if the budget is less than £500.

It's the tube length that puts the strain on the mount, rather than it's weight. Virtually any mount can handle 3-4kg of weight but the near metre long tube is a whole different matter due to moment arm force.

I got the Baader Aspheric 36mm to use with a 150mm F/12 refractor that I had a couple of years back. It was a nice eyepiece at that focal ratio but I was rather dismayed when I tried it with my F/7.5 ED120 refractor to find quite extensive astigmatism in the outer 25% of the field of view.

The Hotech that I had was out of collimation as much as the low cost ones were I've also tried the Baader and a couple of lower cost laser collimators, all with similar issues. I don't seem to have much luck with laser collimators ! I have actually kept one of the cheap ones because it proved the easiest to collimate itself. I tend to use it more for checking optical alignment of refractors rather than my newtonian though.

Yep, the True Track motor / motors will fit onto an EQ5 and the Vixen SP / GP mounts. The only difference between the Orion True Track and the Skywatcher ones is that the housing of the RA motor of the Orion ones is curved to match the shape of the plastic RA motor cover on Orions version of the EQ5. It fits fine on either the EQ5 or the Vixen mounts mentioned though. Synta, the manufacturer who makes Skywatcher stuff, also makes stuff for Orion and a number of other brands so the quality is the same.

I've never managed to get a laser collimator (I've tried a few ) to agree with my cheshire eyepiece and yet the star test shows the cheshire to be correct. Result - I no longer use a laser collimator.