Interesting new mount- Alt/Az portable

[allan gould]

Well I was pleasantly surprised . I ordered the new alt/az mount from ioptron in china. On Friday the money cleared to their bank and at 3:00pm the mount and tripod arrived Monday morning. Now thats service for you.
It was double boxed and everything was in place. No damage whatsoever.
Eager to see what it would do I inserted 8 AA batteries in the mount, switched it on and it came up with the opening screen. Filled in location etc and then did an alignment. No stars as it was clouded over as usual so I just accepted where ever it was pointing.
Then set up several landmarks and asked the mount to go to them and it was spot on every time. There appeared to be no problems at all with the reproducability of the goto, just couldn't do it with the stars.
The goto is done at max speed (1200x) which gives the typical coffee grinder noise but the other speeds, 2x, 8x, 64x, 256x are all quiet and appear without jerkyness. The play in the mount which had been mentioned was not present in my mount. Don't know how typical this is. Even at high mag focussing was easy and no problem.
I tried 4 scopes on the mount. A 90mm MAK, a 102mm widefield refractor, a 80mm WO Megrez and an 8" SCT.
I tried the latter as it was claimed to be able to use this scope on the mount - forget it. It did take the weight but would overload it in time. A 6" SCT would be do-able.
Only the alt axis has a slippage pad, the Az is geared therefore you cant just point the scope to where you want but must use the motors.
I'm running on 8 AA batteries but will try a portable battery and some other things when the skies clear.
So far I,m more than happy. I was going to use my Manfrotto tripod with this but it has an 8M thread in the base of the cube and so I was forced to use the tripod it came with. It isnt absolutely immovable but with care is quite servicable.
In short I'm happier and found my unit far better than the other reviewer noted. Perhaps better quality control.
I got 91c/US$ exchange rate and so I'm laughing as it cost $200 for the unit and $69 postage. So I hav a Alt/Az mount with goto for about $300 - not bad.
I'm going through the handset parameters at the moment and its very easy to use but I need to figure out mow many DSOs it carries and how many user objects.
I'll give another review with more usage on the stars.

[h0ughy]

glad it seems ok - well we wait for the next installment

[Campus Dweller]

Sounds like it should hold a 120mm f5 refractor (6kg) nicely.

[allan gould]

I'm going to try the StarGPS unit that I use on my Losmandy and HEQ5Pro mounts as apparently their GPS unit is a plug in for the Ioptron mount. Also to see if can run it on a 12 volt battery and also I'm curious to see if the hand paddle from the HEQ5Pro will also work with this mount. The Latter would be interesting.

[Omaroo]

Allan - are you saying that you ordered and paid for it on Friday and you received it the following Monday??? :scared:

[allan gould]

Exactly - scary huh?

[Omaroo]

You can't get body parts moved that quickly! Wow!

[allan gould]

Dont know about 6Kg - Thats getting a bit eavy. I would think 3-4 optimum with 5 Kg max.

[Campus Dweller]

Thanks for that advice:).
Hope the mount continues to go well for you.

[Glenhuon]

Probably came from Sirius Optics, I see they are the Aus agents. Nice looking mount, looking forward to hearing how it pans out.

Cheers
Bill

[allan gould]

No, I originally contacted Sirius Optics and they knew nothing about the mount or why they were on the site. The mount and tripod came from China - express delivery. I hope tonight to test it on alignment on stars and the goto.

[dannat]

the mount seems a bargain - i'll be interested in the star alignment - if all goes well I might buy one myself before the $aud has any further stumbles - though I think they are predicting further $us decline - hopefully

[Glenhuon]

Gee, that was quick delivery :eyepop:
According to the web site it has a fair database, should be fun testing it.

Cheers
Bill

[allan gould]

Well last night I got out under the stars and gave the mount a tryout. The starGPS unit I have doesn't work with the unit but thats no loss.
Firstly the handpaddle has a small light at the back (red) which is very usefull for finding dropped things. It and the screen go dark after about a minute of non-use which is very handy. The mount has a few requirements to be accurate for gotos. Like all dumb beasts this one has to have a particular side pointed due South and the scope oriented in a totally vertical position. Easily done with good compass and level. Then just turn the beast on and do a two star alignment. The mount has a small bubble level which was accurate and used to level the cube (mount). Actually I was quite surprised, as if you go through this routine then it placed the object usually within the field of view of a 20mm eyepiece of my 80mm refractor.
I was pleasantly surprised and it hummed and whistled its way all night long on a 12v battery with +ve pin connections. Tracking was very good. Had no problems focussing at high magnification as I was gently using a 10:1 focusser to good effect. Good old WO machining makes life great. If you have too big a momentum of arm at the mount it makes it more difficult to focus but a short scope, absolutely no problem.
I had said earlier that you can't use it in a straight Alt/Az form. I was wrong. The way you do it is to slightly loosen the mount bolt for az and adjust the Alt tension with the large knob on the side. Very easy to use in that configuration. Just swing it around to where you want to view then tighten the knobs for tracking.
I must say that for the money, I'm stoked that I have a very, very portable Alt/Az goto mount for my widefield refractor that will work on batteries (8xAA) or mains or 12v battery. The tripod can breakdown even further for easy transport. So next time I go to my brothers farm and its dark skies thanks to this mount that I can easily take in hand luggage with my scope. If I want to seriously upgrade the database it then I just purchase another handset for ~$100 but I don't think I will. Just keep it simple. If you add objects to the handset ie comets asteroids or user objects, then they are retained in memory when the handset is switched off as is the time and location, so you dont have to re-enter it all again.

[erick]

Perhaps a silly question, Allan. What would you think about mounting a pair of binoculars on it with some form of fitting made up to suit?

Eric

[allan gould]

I don't doubt that its doable as the binos would be close to the mount unless you ofset it a reasonable distance for your head (eyes). Then it would be possible I suppose. Have a look at the photo in my original post and on their website (iopton.com) and it should give you some idea

[allan gould]

I'm going to use this mount tonight to see how capable it is for simple or basic imaging using a watec 120N+ video camera and a frame grabber attached to my laptop. I intend to take between 30-60 sec integrated shots and see how capable this mount is in alt/az. I may be able to use the drizzle function in the DSI software to take out any field rotation. Anyway I'll let you know how it goes. In case you are wondering the Watec 120N+ is capable of single shots of 1/2000 of sec to 10 sec integrations in a streaming continuous mode or single shots of unlimited duration using the hand controller. Has a luminance CCD down to 0.00002 Lux and thats not a typo.

[allan gould]

Well I had a go with the Ioptron mount and set it to go to M42 after 2 star alignment and it went into brain farts!!!!!
Seems the 12 volt battery was low so I changed it re-booted and all was well. Went to M42 and took a few 3 second shots of the trapezium and fish mouth. Stacked them and the result is below. OK and so the tracking was not brilliant (ie up to my Losmandy standard, but what did I expect).

[davewaldo]

Not bad... could be usable for wide field, ie DSLR with 50mm lens?

[allan gould]

I guess tonight I had the best with this new mount. I took great pains to level the mount and to have it pointing South. Then did a two star align and gotos were within a 20mm eyepiece. The went to M42 and started tracking. I was using a 90mm Mak which has a very short tube and ideally suited to the mount. Tracked with M42 in center of eyepiece til I got bored and went to other objects.
If setup is done properly then this mount is fine with alignments and goto as well as tracking. I have found no slop in my axis and I'm very happy so far.