EZ-Touch or Portamount?

[GordonCopestake]

I'm looking for a new home for my ED80 grab and go scope. At the moment I'm using a Celestron SLT mount but after adding a nice 2" diagonal, Binoviewers, 2 eyepieces, a big 8x50 right angle finder etc etc etc the mount is starting to show the strain. Focusing is becoming a pain and thats not what this hobby is about for me. I love the GOTO and tracking but I'm willing to sacrifice that for something thats more stable at high powers (x150-x200 ish). I'll keep the SLT as the GOTO is great for finding those DSO's but for general wandering around the sky I'de like something more stable.

My current options run to the Vixen portamount for £200, it's a nice mount and has slow motion controls which is a plus for me. However the quality assurance is a bit hit and miss as its made by synta for vixen and some units are good, some bad. Also some people believe the tripod isn't all that steady being a fairly cheap aluminum one.

My other option is the Williams Optics EZ touch, which is actually the AOK AYO made in Switzerland. This mount is £400, twice the price of the portamount. It doesn't have slow motion controls so tracking might be more difficult. However it's a much more stable mount and comes with a wooden tripod. The quality is high (they are all made by one man in a 3 room workshop!). Apart from the high price, this is the favorite at the moment. Lots of pennies though.

Final option is the Giro 2 mount. These are £250 without a tripod (they fit any vixen GP synta eq5 style tripod) and have a good write up. Similar to the EZ touch they dont have slow motion controls. The added cost of the tripod puts them near the price of the EZ touch, and perhaps even over if i go for a high quality wood tripod.

Does anyone have any experience with any of these setups? Any advice would be greatfully recieved.

[evansj2000]

Hi Gordon,

I've been using a Giro 2 Mount with a full height pillar and what I think is an eq5 mount,

I found that my 152 TS refractor needed extra stability with a focal length of 1200mm

it vibrated plenty. by filling the legs with sand and using a sandbag in the pillar I've reduced the

vibration..I also needed to remove the spike on the eq 5 mount as it was a mm or two to high

for the Giro 2 mount. Balance is critical to getting good performance but under load the

mount moves well with less vibration

Hope this helps

Jase

[GordonCopestake]

Thanks for the info Jase.

Does any one else have any other experience with either the Portamount or the EZ-Touch mounts?