newbie advice please

[northwalesparry]

Hello all, ive been interested in the stars all my life but never bought a telescope. It was my 40th birthday last month and my wife bought me a skywatcher 130p explorer (tracking)with a alt mount.I am very impressed with the telescope but i need some advice please.The scope came with a small hand held keypad to enable me to move the scope and track a object. I have since been told that you can buy whats called a synscan wich will find objects for me. Is it simple as just pluging the synscan into the port that i use with my current keypad or will i have to update my mount .hope this makes sense thank you phil

[ronin]

I suspect you will have to contact someone like FLO for an answer, or find someone with the Synscan handset that matches your unit and try.

The base units look the same but there could be the absence of a board or software inside the base unit that prevents it.

One other point is that until recently I think that the Synscan handsets were for an Alt/Az mount (yours) or for an Equitorial. They were not I think interchangeable. However I believe that the new firmware in the Synscan handsets now does both.

Personally I would be about 70-80% confident that you could, simply because it is easier for Synta to make lots of the base unit and produce varients by altering the handset supplied. However that still means a fair chance that you could pay out £130-150 and find it does not work.

[rowan46]

the v3 handset is upgradeable I believe you buy the cable seperately and I seem to remember a thread somewhere about someone using the new eq 6 alt/az firmware to give goto gunctionality to a syntrack

[brantuk]

I'm trying to work out which handset you have there exactly. Do you have a pic of it or a link to one on an astronomy sales website? Some alt/az handsets are interchangeable with the synscan one but it depends on the precise model of mount that you have. With a bit more info I could probably help

[Mikea]

Is it the Syntrek handset? 3 round buttons at the top, 2 at the bottom and four direction buttons in the middle?

[northwalesparry]

i will try to upload a pic of the handset as soon as i can , thank you for the advice so far

[northwalesparry]

Is it the Syntrek handset? 3 round buttons at the top, 2 at the bottom and four direction buttons in the middle?

yes it is but there is no name on the handset

[brantuk]

Hmmm... not sure - I've done it the other way round - took the handset off an az goto mount and put it on an auto tracking dob (alt az) which had a handset like yours. Just swapped the handsets and it was all fine. In theory it should work for you but you really need to check with the retailer when you attempt to buy one. But you'll need to tell them the precise mount model

[northwalesparry]

Hmmm... not sure - I've done it the other way round - took the handset off an az goto mount and put it on an auto tracking dob (alt az) which had a handset like yours. Just swapped the handsets and it was all fine. In theory it should work for you but you really need to check with the retailer when you attempt to buy one. But you'll need to tell them the precise mount model

thank you for your help