LaurenceT

At the moment my faulty AZ GTi has gone back to Harrisons Telescopes so I'm waiting on them, I only had it for a little over 2 months so I'm hoping for a replacement. As soon as one arrives I'll post a picture.

I mount my 130pds on the Skywatcher AZ GTI in az mode perfectly easily.

I'm using a collimation cap, I'm not sure how to rotate the secondary on it's axis.

I seem to have got into an almighty mess in adjusting the position of the secondary mirror in my 130pds Newtonian. Initially when I thought I had the secondary adjustment spot on the laser beam reflection was missing the mirror and could be seen on the opposite wall. I then tried to alter the positioning of the secondary mirror by loosening the centre screw and now the image as seen through the focus tube is tilted to the left and for the life of me I cannot rotate it back to perpendicular.

This is the path I am now taking. I bought a Cheshire and to my shame I simply couldn't understand it, I found the various bits of documentation confusing, put it down to my somewhat less than agile 74 year old brain 😅.

What programme was that?

I managed to get a 20 minute window this evening while cooking dinner when the clouds disappeared over Surrey. My Maksutov 127 was installed on my new AZ5 mount but the important factor was the first outing of the Baader neodymium filter my children bought me for Christmas. What a revelation, 25mm BST eyepiece with an X-Cel 2x Barlow with the new filter, details of the lunar surface leapt out at me like never before, vary bright, probably too bright , so next time I'll use a variable neutral density filter. Can't wait for my replacement AZ GTI to arrive and get that planetary camera out of the cupboard!

Excellent, nicely exposed.

I bought a case from them on advice and it lasted for 2 months, both lid hinges fractured at the same time scattering my eyepieces and filters in all directions but thankfully onto the carpet. The rest of the case seemed good enough but on examination the hinges were incredibly flimsy. I then bought a hard Peli type case on Ebay for about £50 and it seems infinitely better built, all fingers crossed! On my phone at the moment but I'll try and link to it later. Max MAX300S Waterproof Laptop Travel Briefcase Hard Case Box With Foam Black | eBay

Following these comments (and others) about the AZ5 I took the plunge a few days ago and bought one from FLO. Even though it was "out of stock" it arrived the next day, I wonder how they did that 😀. I bought it firstly because my faulty AZ GTi has gone back and I don't yet know when the replacement will arrive but also because I realise that this is a true grab and go mount. The moon appeared by mistake above Camberley a few nights ago and I popped my 130PDS on the AZ5 and was literally viewing the moon in a couple of minutes, the Baader Neodymium moon filter I got for Christmas enhanced the experience. The only adjustment I have made is to eliminate a small amount of backlash in the altitude downward movement. I'm glad I bought this mount, I feel it's good value for money and of course I can use it on my existing Skywatcher tripod notwithstanding it's faults.

Can you not send it back to Amazon? I bought a Petzl Tikka head torch from them, the red light is quite muted but it's OK when working on the scope. It has a white light mode so I switch to that if moving away from the scope.

Is it possible for you to buy a Skywatcher 130pds instead with that mount? The 130pds is essentially the same scope as the 130p but is modified to support astrophotography.

Hello and welcome

AFAIK the position of Polaris is in a different position relative to the orientation of the mount in each of those images. Is it not possible to re-orientate the rotation of the reticule in the polar scope? I had a similar problem with the polar scope of my Skyguider Startracker and I had to rotate the reticule in the tube.

Welcome to SGL. I only started my astronomy journey this year and this forum has been immensely helpful to me.

I think it's rated at 4.1 kg so something like the AZ GTI would be suitable.

Post deleted, talking rubbish, again 😳

Hello and welcome to a very friendly and informative forum.

I haven't yet tried the EQ conversion, I probably won't yet as so many people seem to have problems but if it gets sorted out in the near future I too would consider getting another AZ gti for astrophotography only and sell my Skyguider pro.

I've had a reply from them and they're contacting Skywatcher for advice. What concerns me is that the mount came as part of a package with a Skymax 127 Maksutov and I really don't want to have to send that back as well. Thanks for the reply.

I've just emailed the supplier, Harrisons Telescopes, they've been very helpful to me in the recent past. Thanks for the replies.

My AZ GTi started displaying some weird behaviour today. When slewing the azimuth the mount would stop at the same spot, usually it would be able to reverse the direction but when reversed again would stop at the same place, the altitude movement continued to work normally. Occasionally the blinking red connection light would continue double blinking indicating that the wifi connection had not been lost but more often the light went out. Now here's the weird bit, if I loosened the azimuth knob the power light would suddenly come on again and then if re-tightened would go off again. It was as if the azimuth knob was acting as an alternative power switch! This behaviour was reproduced when batteries were substituted for the power bank and when a scope was mounted. I tried the 4 hour wifi reset procedure but this had no effect. Looks like this mount will be returned, I've only had it less than 2 months. Any comments gratefully received.

Thanks for the comments, spending £6 on a collimation cap seems like a good start to the dark arts of collimation, I suspect the other options would not only lighten the wallet but also feed my OCD.

Just got my first reflector that definitely will require collimation from time to time, a Skywatcher 130pds. Ploughing my way through all the reviews and videos I'm even more conflicted. I'm drawn towards getting a mid priced laser as it seems more intuitive and quick to me but so many reviews seem to rubbish them particularly from a quality perspective. I know I could get both, one for each mirror, but we're watching the pennies at the moment. I'm only using the scope for observing at the moment but imaging is on the horizon, comments appreciated.

It's been many years since I've been there but my wife keeps on about going there in the motorhome. I have fond memories of Craster and Seahouses and the biggest skies I've ever seen in the UK. Welcome to this place.