Rowan AZ100

[Stu]

Don't get too excited, this is not a full review, yet, but I thought I would start a thread with some pictures showing the mount in its latest guise as returned to me after IAS.

I put it together this afternoon and popped the Mewlon and FC-100 on it to show a potential setup I'm likely to use. The other most common one would be the Tak and PST mod.

For those that haven't seen the mount in the flesh, it is an impressive beast. It dwarfs the seemingly similar Ercole to such an extent that I can actually see a merit in keeping the Ercole if/when I get an AZ100 as a grab and go option on my Gitzo tripod. I've added a few comparison images to show the differences which might be interesting, plus a number of others from when I first recieved the mount last time around.

This unit has been brought up to latest spec, which is near production level. It has the top lock added to lock the az axis during eyepiece changes without having to use the az tension adjustment which will make life much easier. It also has one dual format saddle which is excellent, very nicely engineered.

The Berlebach Uni 28 is a beautiful piece of kit too, and complements the AZ100 perfectly. I may just have acquired a Berlebach Planet from the FLO sale (😉) to take a potential acquisition in future, but it will take the Ercole too, and likely the GP-DX although it may need an adaptor for that.

Dave sent me the correct settings to use to connect the Nexus DSC to Skysafari, and that is now working as it should. I'll check it out further once outside and eith a properly aligned mount. For the moment I haven't been able to get my Nexus connected but there is no particular reason why it shouldn't. Woll spend some more time on it later.

So, that's all for now. Manflu prevents more activity but I will be in action as soon as the weather allows. Oh, and if these boxes keep arriving, the delightful Mrs Stu will put me outside to live in them I should think 🤣🤣

[John]

Thats looking grand Stu

Hope you are feeling better soon and that the skies clear so that you can give the AZ100 some good star time

 

[JeremyS]

Thanks for the pics Stu. Get well soon.

2 hours ago, Stu said:

I may just have acquired a Berlebach Planet from the FLO sale (😉) to take a potential acquisition in future

Welcome to the Planet owners club. Beautiful pieces of kit!

[Stu]

It's a lovely day out there today, so I put the mount out to have a bit of a solar session, and to check whether I could align the scopes easily.

The setup looks fabulous I must say, and I love the Planet tripod. I had a play around for a while, loosening each saddle and tweaking the position to align the views vertically. It is a little fiddly but I've got it pretty close now, a bit more work needed to get them exact though.

Despite the low altitude and poor seeing, I had some good views, one quite active prom to look at which showed changes over a relatively short period. White light was pretty blank, although granulation was showing well and in a couple of places there were quite dense swirls. No visible spots to me, and only a few small patches of faculae.

The slow motion controls are now working beautifully after all the various fine tuning Dave and I did; this will have fed through to the production mounts. The position of the controls is perfect, and it is simple and intuitive to hold the handles and keep the target centred. This applies when looking through either scope. I actually found it better in some ways than the Vixen GP with dual axis motors in that you have very fine and variable control vs the fixed slew rate (albeit slow) on the DD3 controller.

Vibration damping is excellent, around a second which is good considering the dual scope rig with plenty of weight in the binoviewers.

The altitude lock (Stu's knob 🤣) does the job, although on this prototype it is lacking a mod to allow it to release cleanly every time. Sometimes it's fine, others it just takes a little time to release. Again, production mounts won't have this issue as they have been modified.

If it stays clear, I'll pop the Mewlon on and try it with the Nexus DSC again.

Some pics of the setup this afternoon.

[Stu]

Switched to astro mode now and having some great views of the Moon. Lovely Earth shine. I'll have a bash at M42 later if it stays clear.

[JeremyS]

Lovely looking setup(s) @Stu!

You must be well pleased with your new Planet supporting that little lot.

[Stu]

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

Lovely looking setup(s) @Stu!

You must be well pleased with your new Planet supporting that little lot.

Thanks Jeremy. Yes, very pleased with the Planet, solid and lovely to handle. I can just about pick the whole lot up to reposition it!

Push-to and Skysafari connection also easy to setup and align, accurate too.

[Rob]

14 hours ago, Stu said:

Switched to astro mode now and having some great views of the Moon. Lovely Earth shine. I'll have a bash at M42 later if it stays clear.

Wow Stu. Talk about the stuff of dreams... that really looks an awesome setup. The rowan sure looks the business I have to say!.

Congrats Sir

Rob

[Space Hopper]

Impressive stuff Stu.

I perhaps should have opted for the Planet tripod myself, although my Uni 18 is fine and i always push the spikes well into the ground.

I also raised the height of the accessory tray by about an inch (takes 30min with a bit of drilling) which thus spreads the tripods legs, lowering the centre of gravity for better stability.

[Stu]

29 minutes ago, Space Hopper said:

i always push the spikes well into the ground.

I've just fitted the spikes to mine, have yet to try them out but should be a bit better I guess.

[Stu]

On 01/01/2020 at 23:48, Stu said:

I've just fitted the spikes to mine, have yet to try them out but should be a bit better I guess.

Had a good session with the AZ100 and Mewlon last night. The spikes on the Planet really help, when pushed into the ground the tripod is rock steady. A firm tap on the scope damped down in less than a second and focusing was very easy due to the stability, no waiting for vibrations to subside.

With just the single scope on, I planned to try the CW shaft, which screwed very firmly into the saddle without needing to be removed. Unfortunately the weight I have has the wrong sized hole as it was for a previous version of the CW shaft. Regardless of this, the mount functioned perfectly well without it despite the 10kg fully loaded weight of the Mewlon. The CW shaft itself has some weight to it but will be interesting to see whether adding more weight makes any material difference.

I wanted to further try out the encoders and using Skysafari. The Nexus DSC works extremely well on its own and alignment is straight forward; I set the mount level and pointing West, then turn on the DSC and start the alignment. You confirm the start position then just align on two stars of your choosing and from then on it is very accurate. Being able to quickly manually slew to the alignment stars makes the whole process much faster than a Goto I think.

The connection to my phone has always been very robust, no dropouts or reconnections needed. I do enjoy just being able to use the Skysafari map and see what is nearby, just hopping between targets. Another major benefit is not having to use my straight through finder once alignment is done; simply align the scope position with the target on the screen and it will be in the field of view, even at high power.

Cheating? Perhaps, but last night I was able to observe probably over 20 open clusters around Auriga and Cassiopeia under skies that were not the best, and no doubt I would have struggled to find a fraction of those had I been star hopping.

I played around with a range of eyepieces; 56mm Plossl, 40mm Paragon, 30mm ES 82 degree, 20mm APM 100 degree, 18mm BGO and finally the Docter 12.5mm UWA. Under dark skies, the lower powers would really come into their own, but the sky background was a bit light at home. Even so, they gave better framing around the larger, brighter OCs, and it was fascinating to see how the dimmer stars popped into view as I upped the mag.

When swapping eyepieces, the top lock worked very well, keeping the scope secure even when I had removed the diagonal. The scope did benefit from rebalancing when switching between the 30mm ES and say the 18mm BGO but this was easily done as the saddles can be loosened at little whilst still holding the scope and it slides fairly easily. I do find Losmandy dovetails better in this respect, just that bit more secure and slide more easily. A firm hand still needed in case it drops free of course!

I had collimated the Mewlon at the star of the session so it was performing well. Done at high power on Polaris, I think it is pretty accurate now, although it does shift a little due to mirror flop which I might get looked at. I do find that it is more stable on the alt az mount as the tube is not rotating around, so that is a benefit. Focuser staying level and finder in the same place is another.

I did make attempts at Sirius B but the seeing wasn't up to it. Likewise E in the Trap was there fairly consistently but F was only fleetingly visible. I suspect this is a combination of seeing and light pollution; if you are struggling to see stars of similar visibility anyway, then trying to spot them next to a bright star is likely to be impossible.

One tiny thing which caught my eye was when looking at NGC663. SAO11974 shows as a single star in SS, but when I viewed it I spotted a fainter companion. Sure enough, checking the info on it showed it as a 7.7" separated double of mags 9.22 and 10.38. Nice.

So, another good night with the mount, all functioning as it should and a pleasure to use. No dew last night either which was a big bonus!

[F15Rules]

Fascinating thread, Stu, thanks for all the interesting details.

The AZ100 is a super looking altaz mount, really solid looking and with amazing load capacity.

A couple of quick questions if I may..

- how heavy is the basic manual mount?

- forgive my ignorance, there seem to be various optional add-on accessories.. do the encoders mentioned give the mount sidereal tracking capability? I've always favoured a driven equatorial mount, as I like to be able to hold an object in the centre of the FOV for 10-15 minutes..would this be possible on this altaz mount using any of the listed accessories, perhaps as a later retro-fit option? If so, that would greatly add to the attraction of this mount for me.

Thanks for any light you (or any other users of this mount) can shed for me!) 😊👍.

Dave

[johninderby]

There is a newer thread with updated info.