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Celestron AVX mount

Astroboy239

By Astroboy239
in Discussions - Mounts

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Gazabone

Gazabone

Posted
Posted

Just my personal experience but I hate mine, it's languishing in the attic and the only reason it's there is because I can't quite bring myself to put it in the rubbish collection. Upgraded to a SW NEQ8 and that is massively better (albeit a lot heavier but to my mind at least, just as portable). 

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gonzostar

gonzostar

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, Gazabone said:

Just my personal experience but I hate mine, it's languishing in the attic and the only reason it's there is because I can't quite bring myself to put it in the rubbish collection. Upgraded to a SW NEQ8 and that is massively better (albeit a lot heavier but to my mind at least, just as portable). 

What was the issue with yours?

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Gazabone

Gazabone

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1st one powered up a couple times then went completely dead (I was at my dark observing site on this occasion and the set up was unusable and I had about a 50 mile round trip and could do no observing at all). Then the replacement AVX arrived and Goto was useless, a problem with the Dec encoder was identified (switched tracking off, centre on a fixed object in daylight, take note of altitude and azimuth readings and slew away, slew back, recentre target and note alt/AZ readings - the Dec readings were going out at a rate of 2-3 degrees every couple of minutes or so).  It went back to Celestron who kindly replaced the Dec motor etc but when it came back I tried the same experiment again but the power connection was intermittent (which to be fair is not necessarily the mount's fault) but it "broke" the mount; switching on came up with an error message. I tried reflashing several times but that didn't do any good. After the inevitable online search the opinion was that if reflashing didn't work it was return to Celestron. This is a very brief history but by this time I had had enough of it and already had the NEQ6 which I love. In the 18 months or so I had the AVX it did not work satisfactorily once  

It seems to me that if you get a good AVX they are excellent (there's enough people that rave about them) but if you get a poor one they are a bucket of trouble. 

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Gazabone

Gazabone

Posted
Posted
33 minutes ago, gonzostar said:

Sorry to hear about all that, thankfully  mine not being a bucket of trouble yet!  In future was looking at mount simiular to yours. Is it faily portable?

The NEQ6 is certainly heavy compared to the AVX. I have mine in a suitcase on wheels which makes it quite easy although I could lighten it by carry the counterweights separately. It's not too bad getting it in and out of the car. 

Glad to hear your AVX is going well, you must have a good one!

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Astroboy239

Astroboy239

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Sorry to hear about that. Yup if you get a bad celestron mount it's terrible. It takes me 30mins to load my neq6 setup in my car. Hey gonzostar do you have any astroimages? 

 

Varad 

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gonzostar

gonzostar

Posted
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I do have some images on this forum. Bear in mind that i am still taking subs unguided. So exposures are 2 mins max under light polluted skies. Like M42 on profile picture.

 I think you can see them under topics posted by gonzostar

Dean

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Moon Watcher

Moon Watcher

Posted
Posted

Hey all,

 I have had my AVX for a few years and used it to carry a Celestron 8SE and TS 130mm f7 apochromat in tandem.  It's an awesome mount that is light weight yet heavy duty.  The controller software is great and allows for solar observing and tracking which is not the case for some other mounts.

Two thumbs up in my book!

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gonzostar

gonzostar

Posted
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4 hours ago, Astroboy239 said:

I feel the all star polar alignment will help me a lot in the middle of the city and help me a lot. 

Varad 

Yep if you are imaging I would also do 4 star alignment then do align mount use instructions on handset. Then i would redo 4 star polar alignment. Getting alt + azm as close to zero as possible

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