GavStar

Great mod! The saddle is the worst bit imo of the az gti. It works but I certainly make sure I have a safety screw in place when using it. Hopefully one day soon an easy saddle upgrade will be produced.

Here are the little brothers (for travel and widefield NV views) ?

Telescope express in Germany - it’s an 11 inch vixen dovetail

Yes, that’s the pic of my scope with the longer dovetail bar but I only got it this week so have yet to see how well it works...

Very nice setup! I have the same scope. How do you find balancing the scope given the relatively short dovetail bar? I guess I do load mine up from the diagonal ? So am going to try a longer dovetail bar

17 Ethos and Es 92 so definitely at the upper end re weight ?

I think there’s a very good chance you will be happy. I used my mef-3 for a couple of years fine. However I then made the mistake (?) of buying a scope with a feathertouch and it spoilt me a bit I think. As I think I mentioned earlier in this thread, one dark night the mef-3 screws worked loose for a second time ever in 2 years. However I didn’t have the little Allen key with me to tighten them up again in the dark so was reduced to the 1x focuser for the rest of the night - this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I’ve now had the feathertouch on my Tak for a year and it has always done a perfect job for me with my heavy eyepieces and long NV attachments.

My issues with the mef-3 and Tak focuser were due to the mef-3 screws gradually working loose rather than anything with the Tak focuser itself. Also I did find the metal plate flexed a bit when using heavy eyepieces which made it lose a bit of the feel imo

mikednight is your man on this - from his sketches he clearly gets great views with his FC

If your using it for visual only then no issue since you won’t notice it. It’s only if you do longer exposure photos is there a potential issue...

I’m guessing you mean that the current stock will likely sell out soon, rather than skywatcher completely discontinuing the mount? Its a great mount and it’s only been available less than a year?

This is a pic of my nightvision monocular ready for action. Of course normally I’d just hold the thing and sweep the sky but to be able to do widefield 1x phone photos I need to mount it to keep it completely still for 10 secs...

Well I guess I do have odd issues ? But yes my mount was playing up as well. Sometimes it was worse than others but always there. Backlash makes sense but wouldn’t this sort itself out after a few seconds? Even if I waited a bit it still shows dodgy stars...

I’ve had this scope since it was released last August and really like it (apart from the dovetail clamp and the issues re connecting it to sky safari ?). However I had another slightly odd issue at the weekend. I was using it to take short exposure (10 second) exposures and if I just let the scope goto the target and didn’t touch it further, the 10 second photos gave very good round star shapes. However if I then adjusted the position of the object to be in the centre of the fov and then took a 10 second photo then I got some star tails as if the tracking was not quite right. This happened even if I pressed ok on the centre object button on the synscan app. Has anyone got any ideas how to sort this out?

Had a very nice observing session tonight. I will post some details in due course but I managed to view this object at last - lagoon nebula.

I guess we differ on this one then Mike ? I found that the thin metal plate that attaches the mef-3 to the existing Tak focuser did flex a bit in use. However I was using rather heavy 2 inch eyepieces such as the 21mm ethos so that can’t have helped ? Also the small screws that fixed the fine focuser to the rack came loose twice in use resulting in the fine focuser knob not working. A pain to sort out in the dark! After this happened a second time I got fed up with it and ordered the full feathertouch. ?

I think if Tak supplied their scopes with a 2 speed focuser as standard there would be a lot less discussion. For me, when viewing at high magnification, I require a fine focuser. Therefore upgraded the focuser on my fc100’s immediately. I initially went for the Tak mef-3 upgrade but found it a bit imprecise. I then got a 2 speed feathertouch for my Lunt 60 solar scope and thought it felt so much better than my Tak wth mef-3. So I went the ‘Stu’ route and got a whole new feathertouch focuser and have not looked back since - it’s brilliant! This does seem quite rare though - only seen me, Stu and Marcus z with Taks with full feathertouches. In addition Tak did sell some tsa-120s with a feathertouch as standard rather than its own focuser - that says something to me. My TECs came with feathertouches as standard - never crossed my mind to upgrade those ? My astro-physics has an extremely well made 2 speed astro physics focuser - however imo it’s not as good as the feathertouch on my TEC - a little less precise. The latest 92mm astro-physics has a feathertouch 2 speed as standard!!!

Here’s a couple of my dual setups. The extra vixen clamp for the Panther mount is very handy.

Can’t you return it? If you can’t use the goto, imo it makes the mount unusable.