orly_andico

I've said this before and I'll say it again... the accuracy of the polar scope in the Star Adventurer is pretty darn good. I was pleasantly surprised. It was better-aligned out of the box than my PASILL (Astro-Physics) polar scope.

.. and the Star Adventurer can be guided, not something that the Polarie can do.

You mean the Polarie? IMHO, I'd go for this one over the Polarie. The fact that you have slow motion control in DEC and electric slow motion in RA means you won't be futzing with a ball head to point your lens or scope properly. Also note that the polar scope is built-in and very nice. The Polarie polar scope requires that you remove the camera and ball-head. Or, buy the offset bracket from that German company (for another 100+ Euro). Plus you need to pay even more for the Polarie counterweight shaft.

true a 14mm lens will not require any fine PA or stuff. i used a Vixen Polaris tripod and it was plenty sturdy. Like i said, 2 minutes at 455mm is actually doable (although not 100% round subs - more like 40% to 60% round subs, there is a jump in the RA error every couple subs that causes double stars). I will cadge a Celestron NexGuide stand-alone guider from a buddy and see if that works with this thing.. hopefully that will allow 2-minute subs at 455mm with 100% round subs. I'd be pretty darn happy if that were possible.. seeing as the entire Star Adventurer, DSLR, and scope weighs less than a couple of AP counterweights.

I found that at 454mm (Stellarvue SV80ED, about 4lb) + Televue TRF2008 reducer + SBIG 8300M (pixel scale of 2.42"/pixel) I could get about 40% to 60% round subs at 2 minutes, unguided. So a 200mm lens should be much more forgiving (and much lighter).

I'm using it on a Vixen Polaris tripod which is very similar to a Cg4. The central hole in the tripod hub is too large but it works just fine. I used a 3/8" shcs bolt. There is a sort of lip on the tripod hub, it's not flat. So I used some cork coasters (or duvets) to shim the tripod top to make it flat.

I've DIY'ed a counterweight shaft from an old EQ1 counterweight shaft that I had lying around. More details in my blog - http://orlygoingthirty.blogspot.sg/2014/07/sky-watcher-star-adventurer-part-ii.html The bad news is, balancing the mount did not really improve guiding performance, it's still around 2" RMS, about the same as my old CGEM.

Ok so there is no way to enable PEC of any sort.. There is no PEC indexer on the main worm. Unless one keeps track of the PEC index blindly in NVRAM. I'm tempted to Arduino it myself... But that would result in a DIY and less reliable setup.

I just measured my Star Adventurer at about 23" p-p periodic error. And the guided performance is about 2" RMS. This is without a counterweight. http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=6648924

The EQ3 Pro is cheaper (285 GBP vs 299 GBP) and includes a tripod and has GoTo. The EQ3 isn't airline-portable though. At least not conveniently..