Giro II mount and counterweight

[Moonshane]

Hi all

I bought a used Giro II a while ago and have just really started to use it in earnest. The altitude adjustment siezed after a short while so I dismantled this axis and re-greased, it's now very smooth indeed.

Using it recently (without a counter weight) with my 6" f5 Newtonian, I found that the azimuth axis was also quite sticky and that at higher powers the usual sticktion problem of overshooting the target was becoming troublesome. I therefore re-greased the azimuth axis too. All very smooth now but some sticktion remained.

I therefore though about adding the counterweight bar that came with it and a weight that I retained from another scope. After adding this the motion of both axes has really smoothed out and even at 250x last night, it was easily moved around with just the right amount of freedom. I conclude that for this mount (or at least my issue of this mount) is better with a counterweight (or another scope of the other side) and I'll be using it on that basis in future.

Thought this might help others who never thought to try!