Mesu 200 Arrrives

[Laurin Dave]

My new Mesu 200 from Lucas Mesu's most recent batch has arrived!  Picked it up from Bernard at Modern Astronomy a week last Friday and installed it on the pier on Wednesday. It replaced an AZEQ-6 on a Pulsar Pier so to attach it I removed the stud from the Mesu Adapter Plate (secured with Loctite so needed application of rather a lot of heat) and screwed a 12mm A2 stainless bolt through the Pulsar Adapter plate into the Mesu plate and then drilled and tapped holes for a 6mm locking screw to prevent the Mesu plate rotating (10mm in the Mesu adapter plate and 5mm for 6mm thread in the Pulsar adapter plate).  All very solid.  I then followed Steve Richards (many thanks  @steppenwolf it would have been a real struggle without them ) excellent instructions to install and configure the necessary software and to mount and balance the Esprit 150….  Got it all connected later that afternoon to SGPro and PHD2 and then of course the clouds rolled in…

Thursday the weather was clear from 5:30pm so out I went for an hour… Polar aligned with Sharpcap, performed an Offset Init on Capella and then did PHD2 calibration…  a message appeared “RA and Dec rates vary by unexpected amount”.    PHD2 was reporting that the Dec rate was twice the RA rate which was a bit confusing.   Went out to Basingstoke Astro Socs main meeting to an excellent talk by Mark Kidger of the European Space Agency on the topic of the New Horizons mission.  Got home at about 10:30 and imaged M45 with my Nikon D750 for two hours through a bit of haze, guiding over 2 ½  hours was around 0.7”rms and everything ran smoothly.

On Friday I read up a bit and found out through this forum (thanks @RayD and @tocster ) that I should be using http://siderealtechnology.com/SiTechSetup092ge.exe  rather than the version (92g) which is on the Sitech Support page, so installed that …  Also learned from @RayD to put two washers with grease in between under the main locking nut to prevent mount rotation when tightening. 

So, Saturday night between the clouds and Strictly Come Dancing final I polar aligned using PHD2's drift method.  I had a little help from my dad’s 70-year-old 9” Footprint pipe wrench (still the same one on sale at Screwfix for £16.99).  I found the extra leverage made fine adjustment of the altitude adjusters easy, required no downward force on the counterweight bar and with careful use it has left no marks.  Got PA to 0.2’, calibrated PHD2 and hey presto all was well with RA and Dec rates in sync. The mount happily guided at 0.3-0.5” RMS, turned the guiding off and it was still below 1” RMS over 10minutes.   Did three hours narrowband on the Rossette and got to bed quite late a tired but very happy chap.

Hope this is of some interest and help to others...   I know @gorannis getting one from the same batch.

 

Dave

 

 

 

[Dr_Ju_ju]

soooo jealous...….

 

but wish you all the best.

[vlaiv]

34 minutes ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

soooo jealous...….

 

but wish you all the best.

Me toooo

 

[steppenwolf]

Excellent report, Dave - I hope you continue to be as pleased with your mount as I am with mine!

[tomato]

Congratulations or your set up, you must be getting tired of hearing you won’t regret the outlay, but it’s true, you won’t!

Very gratifying to hear the guiding error you have achieved on a permanent set up, I set up and take down each session and get about 0.7 arcsec total RMS, so good to know what can be achieved when it goes permanent next year. I’ll try the tip of greasing the main locking washer, I’m sure it is moving a little on the final tighten down.

[Tomatobro]

out of interest what size Pulsar dome is that?

[Laurin Dave]

59 minutes ago, Tomatobro said:

out of interest what size Pulsar dome is that?

It's the 2.7 m version..  

[tomato]

Another question if I may, I note the two bars installed adjacent to the Dec motor, these are not on the 2014 version. What is their purpose, my guess is to protect the motor from impact damage?

[Laurin Dave]

3 minutes ago, tomato said:

Another question if I may, I note the two bars installed adjacent to the Dec motor, these are not on the 2014 version. What is their purpose, my guess is to protect the motor from impact damage?

Indeed they are for that very purpose. 

[tomato]

Thanks for that.

Lucas, like all good engineers, is always looking to improve on the design.

[Tom OD]

Well done and good luck in the future with this. This is a good read for me as I'm trying to set up my new Mesu. Great tips in your report.

Tom.

[Tom OD]

By the way I got my mount in Aug and I m pretty sure it does not have those 2 motor protection bars in place.

[ollypenrice]

57 minutes ago, Tom OD said:

By the way I got my mount in Aug and I m pretty sure it does not have those 2 motor protection bars in place.

It doesn't. They are a good idea though, not that we've had an issue with the Mesus in use here.

Olly

[ollypenrice]

I'm sure you'll find that this mount just gets on with it. They are remarkable bits of kit.

Olly

[tomato]

I think the Dec motor is more at risk if, like me, you are daft enough to lift it in and out of a flightcase on a fairly regular basis. 

I do have the technique sorted to a high degree by now, I should post a video clip....

[RayD]

Great news that you're up and running, Dave.  As noted by others, you'll enjoy using this mount, it just does the job.......very well!

[Guest]

Congratulations on your new Gear or set up, looks very impressive !

[gorann]

As everyone says, a big Congratulations on your new mount Dave!

I just got back from a trip to Vietnam and Lucas tells me my Mesu 200 is on a shelf in Holland ready to be shipped. I probably wait until after Christmas with the delivery since I do not want to take the risk of it getting caught up or even lost in the delivery chaos around Christmas. No clear skies in the forcast for the next 10 days anyhow.

Your thread will be very useful, so thanks a lot Dave for taking on the task of finding out about all the small obstacles that inevitibly will arise when you install a new mount. I have been using a SynScan handset until now so running the mount from a computer will present some initiall challenges but obviously also many benefits in the end.

By the way, what counterweight(s) did you get and what did you use for the Esprit 150? I see that you can get expensive stainless ones from Lucas (6.5 and 13 kg) and somewhat less expensive ones (5 and 10 kg non stainless Geoptik) from TS. Maybe also someone else with a Mesu mount have suggestions. I may initially put anything from 10 to 30 kg of scopes on it since I will have a dual rig.

I am sure I will send you more questions Dave!

[swag72]

Geoptik weights here for me.... my 152 refractor needs two of the 10kg ones.

[Vixen4eva]

I`m in the wrong job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alan

[Laurin Dave]

Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement...  it's through reading yours and others user experiences on this forum that I decided to get one after suffering many cold and largely fruitless nights last winter trying to get the AZEQ-6 to behave.  (For some reason it does now) ..  I just wanted equipment that worked (two things actually as I also got an Esprit 150) ... and as Olly often says.... they just do.  I particularly like the noise it makes on slew  ..  

As for counterweights Gorann I got 2x10kg and 1x5kg Geoptik, just using the 2x10 at the moment with the Esprit, side by side with the GTF81 beckons in the new year.  

One other minor issue I had was that the Lakeside focuser lost its com port and calibration first time out, not sure why - maybe Win10, maybe because it and the mount were on a hub, but recalibration and using separate USB ports resolved that one.

Dave

 

 

[Laurin Dave]

1 hour ago, Vixen4eva said:

I`m in the wrong job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alan

I'm retired and cashed in a small pension plan I took out over 30 years ago to pay for it,  managing to convince myself ( and more importantly my wife Jenny) that therefore I didn't pay full price  ! 

[tomato]

I have an Esprit 150 on the Mesu, 1 x 10 kg and 1 x 5 kg do it for me about 2/3ds down the bar. 

[Star101]

24 minutes ago, Laurin Dave said:

Thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement...  it's through reading yours and others user experiences on this forum that I decided to get one after suffering many cold and largely fruitless nights last winter trying to get the AZEQ-6 to behave.  (For some reason it does now) ..  I just wanted equipment that worked (two things actually as I also got an Esprit 150) ... and as Olly often says.... they just do.  I particularly like the noise it makes on slew  ..  

 

24 minutes ago, Laurin Dave said:

 

Welcome to the Mesu club 

I used to use a NEQ6 Pro mount. Trying to balance a C11 with guide scope and cameras etc. 80% of my time fighting with PHD2.

So, I purchased the Mesu 200 from Bernard, it has been heaven in comparison.  Its a dream to use. I still have issues, usually with the laptop, or should I say Win10, focus, clouds etc but never with the Mesu. 

Congratulations 

Clear skies.

[MartinB]

On 17/12/2018 at 19:23, Laurin Dave said:

My new Mesu 200 from Lucas Mesu's most recent batch has arrived!  Picked it up from Bernard at Modern Astronomy a week last Friday and installed it on the pier on Wednesday. It replaced an AZEQ-6 on a Pulsar Pier so to attach it I removed the stud from the Mesu Adapter Plate (secured with Loctite so needed application of rather a lot of heat) and screwed a 12mm A2 stainless bolt through the Pulsar Adapter plate into the Mesu plate and then drilled and tapped holes for a 6mm locking screw to prevent the Mesu plate rotating (10mm in the Mesu adapter plate and 5mm for 6mm thread in the Pulsar adapter plate).  All very solid. 

 

 

How on earth did you learn to master all this.  Fortunately I managed to install my Mesu without any re engineering but if I'd been in your situation I wouldn't have a clue.  The number of screw threads seems to approach infinity and you can guarantee that what ever I have available won't fit the required job and I'll have no idea what I need to buy.  Imperial, metric, diameter, pitch...nightmare!!   Mounting dovetail plates, adaptors, side by side bars and so on is always a major headache  because of screw incompatability.  Bike manufacturers are much more consistent!

Once you have got your head around Sitech you will find the Mesu an incredibly boring mount!  It just slews and tracks, and tracks and tracks and slews.  The guide graph is never very interesting and stars are just dull small round things.  Where is the fun in that!?