Explore Scientific Twilight 1 mount any good?

[Buqibu]

I have a celestron astromaster 102az and while the OTA is fine, the mount is quite poor to say the least. If I was to upgrade, but this be a good option? Says it's capacity is 15 pounds. My telescope only weighs about 5 pounds. Reviews seem to be very positive and the slow motion control knobs look quite useful. However I'm also wondering if this mount would be suitable for larger scopes if I upgrade down the line. It seems to be designed for smaller scopes, but I would like to be able to put something larger, dare I say even something like an 8 incher 😬😬? If this aint it, what other manual alt az mounts under 500 would be good for the job? (Obviously for visual observing). Reason I want a manual one is because in my country it would be pretty much impossible to repair an electronic one if something went wrong. Also I don't want an equatorial mount because I also enjoy terrestrial viewing. Thanks!

[malc-c]

I'm not familiar with the mount so a quick google came up with this

 

My only concern with the angled bar is that it takes the centre of gravity for any OTA outside of the central point of the tri-pod.  My gut feeling is that if you had a scope up to the quoted 15lbs pointing at the zenith hanging off that angled bar there could be a tendency for the thing to topple over.  Its just a feeling, and in practice it may be more stable than it looks.

 

[Buqibu]

9 minutes ago, malc-c said:

I'm not familiar with the mount so a quick google came up with this

 

My only concern with the angled bar is that it takes the centre of gravity for any OTA outside of the central point of the tri-pod.  My gut feeling is that if you had a scope up to the quoted 15lbs pointing at the zenith hanging off that angled bar there could be a tendency for the thing to topple over.  Its just a feeling, and in practice it may be more stable than it looks.

 

Thanks for the video!

[jjohnson3803]

I have an encoder equipped TW-1 that I run my ST120 on (about 11 pounds with finder, etc.).  I'd say that is about the practical load limit for the scope.   And my f5 120 is short compared to f7s and such.  Vibrations take a couple seconds to die down when I rap the tube or change focus with the stock R&P focuser.  Many people advocate putting a wooden plate on the arm to help damp vibrations.  I did and I'm not convinced it helped all that much.

I like slo-mo, but I don't care for dangling cable slo-mo controls that seem to fall off at random and that's partly why I use my SkyWatcher AZ5 much more often than my TW-1 - the SW has slo-mo knobs on it.

There is at least one person who runs a C-8 on a TW-1 apparently successfully.  He wrapped bungie cords around the arm to help stiffen it instead of adding a plate.  I tried putting my old C-8 on the TW and it was a near disaster although I didn't try bungee cords.  YMMV.

[Ags]

I had a Twilight 1 and was very disappointed when using it with a 150mm f5 Newt. I would say the mount is only suited to small scopes, with larger ones it's reduced to jelly.