Skywatcher AZ GTi at weight capacity

[osbourne one-nil]

I've just taken advantage of yet another 15 minutes of clear sky to have a quick play with my recently acquired AZ GTi. I bought it mainly with the intention of holding my Skywatcher ED80 so my youngest and I could have some fun. He's only 18 months old but they're never too young to be an excuse to buy kit. Anyway, due to gravity, that telescope is currently out of action so having weighed my new Vixen 103 (4.75kg inc rings etc and eyepiece) I very bravely loaded it onto the mount and got going. It's a bit nerve wracking seeing your expensive new toy hanging off something the size of tin of soup secured by just one small screw, but it seemed stable enough. 

I fired up the Skywatcher app on my phone, connected the two together, levelled the tube by eye and pointed it north. Alignment was an absolute doddle. The mount placed both my chosen stars (Rigel and Regulus) within the field of view of my 24mm Panoptic and I just centered them as prompted. From switching the mount on to being aligned must have taken 3 mins? I then did a quick tour of the Double Cluster, Pleiades and a few bright stars, to check its goto ability and it got all of them pretty much bang-on. I didn't have a chance to see how the tracking went as the clouds came in, but I was amazed that this little box could do all that. 

As for its load capacity, the scope did wobble as I focused, but even a sharp tap on the tube resulted in less than two seconds' jiggling. Placing my eye gently on eyepiece cup didn't result in any movement and there was no vibration at all visible while viewing. Obviously I was only at low power, but I don't think I'd see anything untoward at a higher power either. The tripod looks flimsy and I'm sure putting it on something more solid would improve things, but I'm not sure I'd want to sacrifice the portability for minimal gain, particularly when I have a beefier mount if I needed it anyway. The app was good and it's nice to see the screen reddened, although on my phone some navigation buttons were still left white so I might need to find an app to truly redden the screen. The only thing that didn't work was the freedom-find facility as when I slackened the clutches and slew the scope about by hand, it did lose its positional sense. I might have done something wrong, but I don't think I'd trust it to be moved manually anyway; certainly not near its weight limit. 

It was great fun and despite my scepticism of goto due to the faff of having to align, the ease with which I got this sorted will ensure I do pop out whenever the opportunity allows. Impressed!

[Stu]

They are great little mounts Piers. I stick mine on a Gitzo with the Skywatcher pillar and it is very stable. I was using mine last night, very quick to set up and accurate too as you say.

The Synscan app is good for basic stuff, connected to SkySafari it makes it even more capable.

With an iPhone it so a bit of a pain as you need to use a handset to connect, iOS cannot run two apps simultaneously. With iOS however you can apply a red filter to the everything including the home screen via the accessibility options.

[Kitos_Akash]

Greetings to everyone,

What do you think about a az gti + 120 startravel scope? Is a overweight combination?

Thanks you all