Skymax 127 AZGoto instant impression

[DannyL]

Just recieved my new skymax 127 AZ Goto courtesy of Telescope Planet and I thought it would be worth recording the first instant impression.

I was surprised it came in one box and a not very heavy box at that. I know it is marketed as transportable, but the tripod looks kind of heavy in the marketing pictures. Anyway, it isnt, and the completely assembled scope can be lifted around with little effort.

Soon had it all together, dead easy, just as well as the 'instruction' manual is about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.

First job line up the finder, late afternoon, only trees at some distance to use. First worry. The Mak is supposed to be dead sharp but the image of the tree tops was, well, mushy.

I puzzled at this for some time but after it went dark and I was able to see Jupiter, and later Mars and a bunch of stars I can only say I am delighted. None of those objects was well placed , both

planets low in the sky, but the image from the Mak was streets ahead of what I can get from my 120mm Helios f8 refractor.

I assume that the reason the trees looked mushy was because at a minimum magnification of 60 with a focal length of 1500mm there would have been virtually no depth of field as us old photographers call it. The tree tops do not lie neatly in one plane, therefore, whatever I was focussed on, most of the image would have been at a different distance and therefore out of focus to varying degress. praps a flat brick wall would have produced a better image.

anyway I dont much care because on the sky it was brill. Perfect Airy disks on bright stars, with completely even and concentric rings at intra and extra focal views.

In practice the light weight tripod was about as steady as the significantly heavier tripod on the Helios, I assume the reason is that the Mak is a much lighter load to carry, anyhow it was perfectly useable for visual use. Focussing was easier and caused less wobble than on the Helios and failry soon damped down. Sorry didnt time it but it was not excessively long.

First real gripe. no dew cap, after it had been out about an hour there was ice forming on the corrector lens, ( and on the end of my nose!...and things) Tonight I have tried a cardboard tube and no ice or misting that I can see so the question is; wheres my dew cap?

Second gripe. The tripod is too low, for an average male it puts the eyepiece at stooping height, not standing, not sitting on any ordinary chair, but back bent, back aching stooping... Bit of a pain at my advanced age. Still it has to be transportable I suppose.

Synscan Goto

This very nearly got thrown in the pond, only it would have bounced off the ice!

Initial problem was set up, the guide is not particularly clear or complete. Anyway got it initialised and started alignment.

You set your date time position in lat and long, daylight saving etc. so far so good . Then you choose two star, or brightest star set up. As I can never remember the names of stars, I opted for the single star set-up on the grounds that that would only be one I would have to identify.

this is where it gets irritating, it kept asking me to find Arcturus. Now the knowledgeable will know that said star is below the horizon until the early hours and this was 7pm!

Repeated the process over two or three times, getting more and more tetchy, still it wanted me to use stars that were not accessible.

Pulled the plug and started from absolute stratch. Thats when I noticed that they wanted the date as mm/dd/yy as per the US I had set the date as dd/mm/yy as per good old blighty.

No wonder it wanted stars below the horizon, I had it thinking it was July!

Anyway the upshot was that the unit was able to find Andromeda and Orion nebula one after the other and place them well within the field of the lowest power eyepiece x60. Not actually centred but fairly close. Fully useable for sightseeing.

Tracking after location was variable on some objects it was quite good, on others, not so much. Need to work pon that one.

small gripes. The mount is supplied with a very crude battery pack that takes 8nr AA batteries, and then you put the whole thing in a little leather pouch ( supplied) and try to find somewhere to hang it off the mount. Needs to be supplied with a transformer.

The Synscan hand set has a holder on the tripod but the unit does not actually drop into the holder because of the way the handset is shaped. Twice I failed to get it into the holder and only just avoided it hitting the floor.

OK I am clumsy, but something like that should be as near as dammit foolproof.

All in all I am pleased after one very cold (-7) observing session and I think I could recomend the scope.

[oceanheadted]

Danny,

thanks for the review. Handset design has yet to be perfected, my dad's ETX-125 drove me to distraction trying to set it up, especially with the annoying message about not looking at the sun (when there wasn't any around!).

The vixen sysensor 2000 makes a lot more sense, but is a bit clunky

cheers

Alan

[omneferuss]

Absolutely accurate review sofar as my areas of experience (re handset especially) overlap. More data for the future, contingencies... one cannot live by over-optomistic aperture aspirations alone ! ..tho', a BIG Mak IS on the list

[alfingido]

The Synscan hand set has a holder on the tripod but the unit does not actually drop into the holder because of the way the handset is shaped. Twice I failed to get it into the holder and only just avoided it hitting the floor.

OK I am clumsy, but something like that should be as near as dammit foolproof.

I got round this problem with my HEQ5 by putting velcro ( fuzzy side) on the back of the handset and velcro ( hooky side) on various bits of the mount and top of tripod legs. That way, theres always somewhere handy to hang the handset

Allan

[Mikea]

small gripes. The mount is supplied with a very crude battery pack that takes 8nr AA batteries, and then you put the whole thing in a little leather pouch ( supplied) and try to find somewhere to hang it off the mount. Needs to be supplied with a transformer.

Glad you liked your new instrument! Pleased you figured out the GOTO.

I am amazed that Skwatcher spoils these scopes with that silly little battery holder! Mine was speedily replaced with a 12V sealed lead/acid.

Happy observing!

[John]

Very interesting review - thanks for posting it.

I can never understand why maksutov and schmidt cassegrain scopes don't come supplied with a dew cap as standard as, certainly under a UK climate, they are more or less mandatory acessories if you want to observe for more than an hour, and it takes most of that for a mak to cool down if its been kept at room temperature !.

[russ]

Synscan Goto

This very nearly got thrown in the pond, only it would have bounced off the ice!

Very entertaining review, very much enjoyed it. And i think most of us have been frustrated with a new Goto system at some point. I had a mare with both the ETX90 and LX90. Neither one really worked as they should have. Strangely, the Meade LXD75 using the same system worked like a charm.

The 127 is an awesome little scope, had two of them and they were a pleasure to own.

The SW AZGoto looks to have the same tripod as the Celestron SLT. I found it to be the weakpoint of the SLT setup.

Enjoy your scope

Russ

[jgs001]

Nice review Danny. A couple of things, AA batteries can't cope longer than a very short while, look at getting an external power source of some kind. I got a Maplin car starter and it was able to drive the SLT mount for days many hours. The other thing is, work out a levelling routine, if you have a built in level, check it's accuracy with a proper spirit level. The bubble level on my SLT is less than useable, once I'd got around that, and levelled with a spirit level, my goto and tracking became much much better. I found the same thing with the tripod, the way around it, is to lower it and view seated. This has 2 benefits, 1) it's more comfortable and 2) being shorter, the tripod is more stable.

[DannyL]

As a follow up to the review, I would just like to add that the Synscan Goto system is not very durable. After it had irritated me for over an hour with various glitches such as not responding to the keys, only offering one brightest star ( which wasnt) I decided to see if throwing it on the floor and jumping on it made it work better. It did not, but it felt good.

Why cant computer based stuff just work out of the box?. If anything from the pre computer age worked as eratically and badly as modern computer controlled stuff it would never have sold..

[Ant]

I didn't think that synscan would work with those silly battery holders...?

The synscan requires around 2 amps I thought and you're not going to get that from a lot of AA's (well not for long anyway).

I found (and still do) the synscan to be quite straight forward. But I do agree that entering the date in that format is a pain in the butt, and also if you do not know the names of a lot of brightish stars - you're going to struggle.

I usually have stellarum (or SN) running which helps with the star identification.

I also agree that these scopes should come with a dew sheild - but they do not. As you've found it's a fairly straight forward problem to over come, but you'll want to invest in a powered solution as some point - I use the Astro zap stuff and it's quite good - they do a combined shield with built in strip, which is very effective.

Ant

[Psychobilly]

Nice review...

There's something about a mak... Probably had some of my nicest views of the moon and planets through the ETX90.. Maybe because I used to go to dark sites with it..

Maybe I need another one so that I can get out and try some planetary stuff without added annoyance of tree dodging...

With respect to the Date and Time formats it seems to be quite a common cause of reported Goto problems.

Unfortunately the UK little endian format seems to have lost out to the middle endian format in that one despite the fact that the little endian format is used in more countries world wide......

All the different handsets have their little idiosyncrasies sent to try us when out in the dark and cold ...

Billy...

[alfingido]

M

With respect to the Date and Time formats it seems to be quite a common cause of reported Goto problems.

Unfortunately the UK little endian format seems to have lost out to the middle endian format in that one despite the fact that the little endian format is used in more countries world wide......

They all seem to have this format which defaults to the system used in the USA, which, i assume, is the home of many of these large optical companies.

As we all know, there is nothing outside the USA, this is the reason why in their World Series events, all the competitiors are American!

Giod Bless America! ( no, really)

Allan

[Tommo72]

Great review, really enjoying my mak aswell. Also had a little trouble with the goto allignment but after a couple of nights i seem to have the hang of it. As for the power supply i happen'd upon a 240v transformer that converts down to 12v 1 amp tip + (the book says 1200mA) and has different sized tips. got this for £8 i think in Halfords, works for me. Also waiting on meade 4000 series 6.4mm and 32mm E.P's, will let you know how these perform.