Will my CG5 take....

[stefski]

Hi All,

I was thinking of trying to mount my OMC 140 CF and TMB 80/480 onto my CG5. Can the mount take this amount of weight if I want to try my hand at a bit of imaging?

I know the total weight (two OTAs, an OAG, filterwheel, two cameras and an autoguider) should be well within the max load limit for the mount, but I just wanted a few opinions.

At the mo (when there aren't any clouds:mad:) I'm having to swap OTAs on the mount each time I want to use them.

Stef

[E621Keith]

I think that set up is too heavy. I tried side by side mounting my C6 and SV80s on a EQ5 (similar to CG5) and it was very unstable. CG5 and the skywatcher mounts are quoted for visual load capacity. Imaging load capacity is much lower. The Vixen GP2 (from which CG5 and EQ5 were cloned) is rated for 7kg.

For imaging, you really need a more substantial mount, normally people say an HEQ5 will be a minimum requirement, but I'd say you'll need an EQ6 for your setup. My C6+SV80s weights about 9kg and I think a OMC140+TMB80 should weight the about the same. Adding cameras and filter wheels should push that weight to 12-14kg, which is probably beyond what an HEQ5 can handle for imaging, so you should consider an EQ6.

[blinky]

I use an HEQ5 with about 11KG of load and it is right at the top end of what it will do - the least bit of wind and it wobbles all over the place

[stefski]

Cheers guys....As I feared....Time to fork out once more!!!!