alt az mounts

[Bender]

After I had to cancel my order for a Giro Ercole as the delivery to my dealer got delayed I am still undecided which mount to get.

On one hand i love the simplicity of a alt az mount but also value DSC's.

So far i saw 3 options

DM-4, great mount but with taxes etc probabely more than my 2nd best option plus a decent solar scope.

Giro mount with my Celestron ScyScout installed on the second arm as a poor mans DCS

Ayo mark II with Argo Navis, again not cheap but more reasonable than the DM4

Going through the ads in the last edition of Astronomy now, i saw the Ioptron mini II alt az mount. I wouldnt normally consider a full blown mount but this one seems to be compact, hopefully ok with no counterweights for my scope and got good reviews sofar.

[Marki]

I think the Minitower is pretty nice - we have one and its is great with an 80mm Apo without needing a counter weight. I did once put a 102mm starwave on it - was pretty stable then too, but felt happier with counter weight on. The GPS can be a bit temperamental, sometimes it take 20 mins to work, other times it finds satellites at once (you can enter details manually though). Once the GPS kicks in and the mount is levelled and pointed south, I found it pretty accurate even with a one-star alignment. We left it outside tracking Jupiter last one night last week and came back an hour later and its was still pretty much centred. I find it better than the 8SE mount I have.

Astronomy Now ran a review by Prof Ian Morrison a while back (its available via the altair astro website) - worth a read (apologies if you've already done this ). Must admit, I;ve been thinking about getting an ercole myself though... .