Jon A Chard

Im still testing my two mounts. What has been rather amazing is that we have gone from vapourware to imaging!!! It takes a little effort to get the best out of friction drive, but when the skies finally settled (and it was misty) guiding on both mounts was around 0.35-0.4 Arcsecs. Typical for most of my sessions was 0.5-0.7 and for a lot of that testing i could see cloud on the guide scopes quite easily at 8 second intervals! So still some testing to do and a level of consistant effort in polar aligning, but the mounts are BOTH imaging!!! YEAY!!! So here is the fruit of my labour. Im not very good at editing and i shoot from poor Bortle 7 skies. The first image, Great orion, is RASA 11 (620mm)on AA61MFX around a 23kg imaging load. The second image is the Monkeyhead nebula shot on the 12" ONTC F4.6 Newt (1380mm) using Altair Astro 26m. Id put this at about 20kg but consider with its dewshield its 1.5m long! In facto both scopes with full dewshields are very very similar in length! So not easy load, although the rasa is only 620mm.

Credit to Steve of ENS optical. The mounts were with me soon after midday the next day! Cheers Steve!

My two new Trident P75's. Some minor changes to suit my nightly tear down and setup. The handles / knobs are not typical for this mount. The saddle plate provided is a full slide in losmandy plate. I dont like trying to man handle a 1.2m scope into a slide in dovetail. So i replace it with a slide in losmandy plate - offering a drop in Altair Dual saddle. This is my personal choice - lucky i had two spare! I have not yet had a clear night to test guiding. Im hoping this happens on Sunday.

They arrived but the clouds gods said NO! "None shall test!" My two new Trident P75's. Some minor changes to suit my nightly tear down and setup. The handles / knobs are not typical for this mount. The saddle plate provided is a full slide in losmandy plate. I dont like trying to man handle a 1.2m scope into a slide in dovetail. So i replace it with a slide in losmandy plate - offering a drop in Altair Dual saddle. This is my personal choice - lucky i had two spare! I have not yet had a clear night to test guiding. Im hoping this happens on Sunday.

I shall indeed try!! I have some interesting loads to test (RASA 11" and 12" carbon newt, Red cat *snigger*) and I have zero protection from the wind. What does make comparative testing difficult is that i live very close to Fawley, Southampton where an oil refinfery churns the cold air with hot as well as providing a light dome of doom! Typically with a 23kg RASA11, an eq6r on better nights will guide around 0.4-0.6 arcsecs, the CEM120 down to 0.3-0.4arcsecs, an EQ8 around 0.4-0.5 arcsecs. I have never seen better than 0.2 arcsecs, certainly not for more than 30 seconds, maybe a minute at best! I would say a typical average is probably around 0.6-0.8 arcsecs (remember no obsy!). You must also realise that the UK is typically fighting the jetstream directly overhead - we dont get calm views of jupiter or even the moon for that matter and certainly not on the South coast. What im also really interested in is the more consistant "flatter" guide graphs and the performance under windy conditions - I find the EQ8 is significantly more robust than the other designs when winds are up as it doesnt seem to bounce on its belt like other designs. With no observatory this has become a more important consideration than outright performance in some instances. Wouldnt it be nice to find all of this in one new, well priced package? I have two identical piers, and hopefully two identical Tridents! Im not a reviewer, but i do know MY skies and MY previous kit fairly well. I hope to report on them in the coming weeks, skies permitting.

Great and exciting news!!! I took a leap of faith and ordered two JTW Trident 75's through JTW distributor - ENS Optical. They were passed through UK customs today and Steve has offered to personally deliver by end of week. After reading the very positive review by Peter Shah and with many supportive conversations with Steve @ ENS, I'm confident that these will meet my expectations. I'm hoping to provide some images of the packaging and products as soon as possible and a lightweight review once I have them mounted on the pier. I'm no equipment specialist, but I do have fairly extensive experience with NEQ6/EQ6r/EQ8, CEM 26/40/60ec/120.

Great and exciting news!!! I took a leap of faith and ordered two JTW Trident 75's through JTW distributor - ENS Optical. They were passed through UK customs today and Steve has offered to personally deliver by end of week. After reading the very positive review by Peter Shah and with many supportive conversations with Steve @ ENS, I'm confident that these will meet my expectations. I'm hoping to provide some images of the packaging and products as soon as possible and a lightweight review once I have them mounted on the pier. I'm no equipment specialist, but I do have fairly extensive experience with NEQ6/EQ6r/EQ8, CEM 26/40/60ec/120.

Great and exciting news!!! I took a leap of faith and ordered two JTW Trident 75's through JTW distributor - ENS Optical. They were passed through UK customs today and Steve has offered to personally deliver by end of week. After reading the very positive review by Peter Shah and with many supportive conversations with Steve @ ENS, I'm confident that these will meet my expectations. I'm hoping to provide some images of the packaging and products as soon as possible and a lightweight review once I have them mounted on the pier. I'm no equipment specialist, but I do have fairly extensive experience with NEQ6/EQ6r/EQ8, CEM 26/40/60ec/120.