As some of you may have seen, I took delivery of one of these recently (it's not like me to be an early adopter!). The Scopetech Zero is no longer available and the Sightron seems to be similar:
I bought it for grab & go for my Starfield 102ED. Here they are married up:
The mount weighs just 1.45 kg and has a max payload of 7kg. When fully loaded, the Starfield is about five and a half kg.
Last night, I was able to try it out for the first time. Here are some reactions for anyone considering the same mount.
Notes:
1. The vertical arm is adjustable for rake. Make VERY sure this is firmly fixed before adding the scope. I didn't and the arm slipped, giving me a near heart attack! I would also suggest having it as vertical as possible to keep the CG above the azimuth pivot.
2. There are two options for the locations of the slow motion screws. I assume long dangly ones could also be fitted, though I felt no need for them.
3. The slo-mos are very smooth and make it very easy to centre and track a target, even at high mags. I found a "null" between (e.g.) left and right turns, a little like a car with a dead- ahead null in the steering. Once I found it, I had no problems with it - it's considerably better than having backlash....
4. There were vibrations at higher mags when focusing, which I'd expected as my scope is quite long and approaching the mount's payload capacity. These dampened very quickly, however, and didn't cause me any undue difficulty.
Conclusions:
For my G&G purposes, the Sightron is absolutely ideal, being light, easy to fold up and transport and sturdy enough. I can now pick up and carry scope, mount and tripod very easily. I would probably go for something with a higher payload as a permanent mount for my scope.
For people with small f/l fracs of 50-90mm apertures, or smaller Maks, I'd have thought the mount would be perfect even for permanent use.