Robin B

I had a final thought, more of an industrial design quibble on the battery compartment... There's that rather awkward bit of wiring between the caddy for the batteries and the mount housing. We have a couple of wildlife "trail cameras" and although they both come from different companies, they both use a form of wire-free battery caddy which snuggly slides in and out and uses sprung contacts to make the connection - no difficult wire to position correctly. Is a wire attached to a PP3-style connector what Skywatcher use throughout their mount range? e.g. Oh dear that's reminded me of a power question. There's nothing in the manual about whether you can leave the batteries in the mount and plug into external power. Imagine you like to go equipped with the hope of having some mains within reach, but you want to be prepared in case there isn't. I've seen the powertank type options, but there's a limit to how many accessories I want to buy. I've already received a 15mm EP, barlow and moon filter through the post, from the same supplier, just a day or two after returning the mount... such is the fun of ordering when there isn't stock! If I was practising with the mount and automation at my desk I'd like to plug in a 12V mains supply, but do I need to go removing and reinserting batteries all of the time. This may be something I can work out with a multi-meter when I get the mount back, but I guess there will be knowledge here 🙂

Thanks for the feedback guys. I was loathe to open it myself within days of receiving it and invalidate any warranty and return option. Yes, I'd seen the Youtube videos, but it seemed like a straight case of "this should never have passed QC, so it should be replaced". I was actually hoping that on seeing my email (with video) I was going to be returning the faulty unit and receiving a replacement by return of post. That way I would have lost very little usable time with the new telescope. Adam, you make a very interesting point that I'm probably better-off with a knowledgeable bit of maintenance being done rather than taking pot-luck with a replacement. I hadn't seen it that way originally. Having waited so many weeks to receive the scope, the prospect of the mount disappearing for days or possibly weeks was unappealing (at the time)! As luck would have it, the skies have been particularly bad since the collection of the AZ GTi last Monday 7th, so I haven't missed much. Perhaps I am better off if the news is "we've taken a look and made adjustments" - For most equipment that's not what you want to hear, maybe in the case of this Skywatcher AZ GTi model the TLC after manufacturing is better. 😀 In the end though, it is unfair on the retailer to pick up the cost. If Skywatcher got lots of returns they might attend to their QC problems, which would be good for us, good for the retailers and better for Skywatcher. Any thoughts on the relative stiffness of the AZ axis? Similarly the many turns of the AZ clutch knob... Quoting my original detail:- Final question: would owners of this mount confirm that the EL-clutch is nice and smooth and progressive in use, but the AZ-clutch is still quite stiff, even when slackened? I thought the small knob for controlling the AZ-clutch had a very unconvincing feel. Too many turns to tighten and too many to loosen. It's as if there is an enormous dead-band between tight and a bit slack. Robin

Hi folks, new user on Stargazer'sLounge, Could you do me a favour and take a look at a daytime video capture which shows, what I think, is a gear problem in my AZ GTi. I ordered a Skymax-127 + AZ GTi on 12th October and so far I've had only a couple of evenings to use it. The slow supply from China and strong demand in the UK is the reason for the initial delay so I don't blame the supplier. The weather was pretty poor as it has for many of us in the UK. On my first evening I was getting to grips with Synscan Pro App and trying to do some alignment. I kept finding that doing GOTOs back to objects that I had aligned was not working very accurately. By my next evening with some visibility I had done much more reading about people's issues and things to take care over, this time I was still finding that just hoping between say Moon, Mars Capella was not very accurate, but I spent more time just looking at the moon with the supplied eyepieces and using the fine-adjustment on the Synscan App. I noticed that the tracking was quite "lumpy" - It was as if the telescope was being touched. I wanted to take this up with the supplier because I was getting convinced this was probably a gear issue and it would explain the inaccurate GOTOs. I thought a video would be worth a lot of words, so in the next cloudy evenings I got the ZWO camera out and had a play on my desk and got FireCapture working on my laptop. By the weekend the weather was still poor, so I decided to setup the telescope in the daytime and do some "tracking" whilst pointing at a daytime target. ** I'd love to have your opinions on the motion that you see in this short (50 sec) video ** . https://youtu.be/EK9MFdRJl5E I turned the mount on when it was pointed north-level. Then I slewed it to point south-east, to point to a neighbour's roof ridge. I then turned on siderial-rate tracking. I was not touching the scope at all. All the "bouncing" is the tracking. The video starts and ends with a short period of tracking turned off (there's no edited freeze frame!) and there was no significant breeze. The clutches were tight. The scope was carefully balanced. The view is of the left top of the roof ridge of a neighbour's house over the back. Once the video is playing you are not really sure what you are looking at unless you know! Although I haven't had a scope for over 40 years I'm fairly competent with techie things. I've had the mount working as a hotspot and on the home WiFi, without issues, I just paid attention to details. I've had a Raspberry Pi running Astroberry and getting that talking to the AZ GTi and getting it to move whilst sitting on a cork mat on my desk ('cos it was foul outside) ...so I can follow instructions! The response from the supplier to my video was "Our engineer would like to have the mount back to check it here for you". That was 7th Dec. A return was very swiftly organised, it was collected the same day. That was impressive! The less impressive aspect was that I made and sent the email on Saturday 28th November, so it took a week (and a chase email) to get to the point of asking for the return (a week where I at least got playing with Astroberry) - I've heard nothing since. I respect the fact that Covid is playing havoc with supply chains and that people are perhaps not able to work in their usual environments, so I don't want to name names at the moment, but I would really appreciate some experienced people's feedback on the motion which they see in my video. Because the whole thing was brand-new I really didn't want to start disassembling and making internal adjustments. A year down the line I might have, if something seemed to have started to develop, but this is brand new. I've owned this scope and had about 3 hours use so far and I have little idea what's going to happen next. I hope that after all the wait I'm going to get a replacement AZ GTi and not be told "no fault found". Final question: would owners of this mount confirm that the EL-clutch is nice and smooth and progressive in use, but the AZ-clutch is still quite stiff, even when slackened? I thought the small knob for controlling the AZ-clutch had a very unconvincing feel. Too many turns to tighten and too many to loosen. It's as if there is an enormous dead-band between tight and a bit slack.