Darren Hill

Does sound like there is an electrical issue. Were you able to find out what the issue was?

7 hours ago, Chris Lock said:

Nice post Darren, I've also had fun stripping and rebuilding an EQ6 in order to re-grease and belt drive mod it.

 Mine was a lemon bought second hand, the guy was really chatty until he got my money, then he broke contact for a couple of weeks so I started to think I'd been taken for a ride. I had in a way because a while later the eq6 pro did arrive but in a right state, it had massive backlash, clicking slipping sounds when it slewed, and there was a big gap in the casing where the seems met. Nothing like the previous NEQ6 I had which worked flawlessly out the box. Finding the time to sort it out was really hard, I had two new born twins at the time and a 2 year old. I Only ever managed to improve it so ended up selling it dirt cheap with full discosure. Lesson learnt, I would only buy a second hand goto mount if I could see it first now, but I'm more inclined to buy them new or in the sales. thankfully I've never had a problem buying a new Synta mount  

Just to mention, I'm not sure you're supposed to adjust the alt bolts with the OTA onboard? The MN190 is a big heavy scope too so I think the bolts would always bend in that case? 

100$ is a lot for bolts. They are £25 here which works out to 44 Canadian dollars.

http://www.axio35.dsl.pipex.com/astrodevelopments/Synta cables.htm

I don't know how much this would work out as by the time they landed in Canada though? 

The new bolts were purchased in the UK and shipped to me here as a kit... they are now cheaper to acquire and some of that was shipping. If you cannot adjust the mount with the OTA onboard, you cannot drift align, or make use of Alignmaster or the Polar alignment routine on the hand controller. In my opinion, you rate a mount at 35lbs for astrophotography - then I believe it's a reasonable specification that it's accurately adjustable at that weight without bending components or cutting my hands open. I know Chris, I'm a little deluded in my expectation. That said, Synta brought great tracking performance to the masses who otherwise might not ever get into astronomy.

Is the AP mount worth the cost? For most probably not. It's lack of Go-To makes the Celestron AVX, EQ5, and Bresser mounts look very attractive - but I constantly hear people bemoaning the lack of bearings on the DEC axis on the AVX, for example - making guiding sometimes virtually impossible on an astrophotography advertised mount. The places where the Chinese make cutbacks or compromises is sometimes totally bewildering. The "Total Cost" of ownership in money and time is something that's hard to nail down until you actually use these products longer term. That's probably why the Losmandy, Vixens and others are still in business.

It's unfortunate that the exchange rate is making Vixen more expensive. I will give Vixen credit - I've owned Synta products and Vixen products: Vixen is generally better quality, better mechanically, and better consistent performance. My EQ6 required some modifications and a tear down before it really reached it's potential. It had the craptacular bendy bolts that couldn't be adjusted with my MN190 on the mount. $200 for a tune-up kit, $100 for new bolts, and several hours of adjustments and un-torquing of the main head pivot bolt at 150ft-lbs of torque and yes - I can finally say that EQ6 is a pretty good performer. I know the AZEQ6 has addressed many of these shortcomings  - but you know and I know that Chinese mounts are spectacular awesome bargains or complete steaming piles of agony.

I wouldn't blame you with picking the Vixen - especially if portability is a priority. It's your time under what precious little time you guys get in the UK - enjoy yourself and get what makes it pleasurable.

Darren.

On 12/13/2016 at 15:21, Crose01 said:

Nice setup how did you attach your red dot finder to your camera?

 

Regards
 

Chris

Chris, sorry for the late reply - The red dot finder hot shoe adapter is 3D printed, and I purchased it online at an astronomy dealer. They no longer carry it, but is similar to this link

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p5641_Lacerta-adapter-for-mounting-red-dot-finders-to-camera-flash-shoes.html

Huge timesaver!

8 hours ago, Crose01 said:

Although I was pretty pleased with the Pleiades image. It was unguided with around five minutes polar alignment error it was unguided. This image was 

combined using five minute exposures which for 300mm is on the upper edge of the envelope for this mount I am seeing trailing in the 769 Tatjana blog

images. This you can see on my blog on my website

http://www.digitalastroimager.com/my-blogs/

I eliminated flex and bounce  as much as possible and will see if I can improve PA and run with the autoguider next chance I get. Astrotrac claim five arc seconds peak to peak with this setup (RA onlly).

It is fun getting good PA though!!!

Regards

 

Chris

Hi Chris;

I am using the Astrotrac with a Nikon D7200 and the cheaper Nikkor 70-300mm F3.5-5.6 telephoto lens. Your experience and comments piqued my interest. After dropping the Astrotrac polar scope, I had no luck collimating the scope and replaced this with the Polemaster, and have had good success so far with this setup. I'm running without the declination arm, and I am getting luck with 240mm FL, and two minute exposures. I'm looking forward to pushing to 3-4 minutes next time out. Love your pic.