gregbradley
03-11-2011, 10:31 PM
I received my PMX yesterday.
It is well packaged and looks fantastic.
The colour is slightly different to the PME - slightly pinker and brighter in colour. It looks very well made.
A few minor hiccups.
The serial numbers for the software aren't where they say it will be in the manual (on the shipping box) but rather underneath the white foam the mount sits on - which is a bit hard to remove from the box and is the last place you would look. Anyway.
The driver for the Mks5000 system also is not on the supplied CD so the instructions on how to load it fail. A quick search on the SB PMX forum shows it as a download on the SB site once you have registered your mount.
It isn't that much smaller than the PME and sits just a bit lower overall.
It oozes finesse and careful construction. Like a Takahashi scope.
It has some nice touches over the PME. The adapter plate worked very well and meant I did not need to drill any holes to fit it to my existing pier plate. That was unexpected. The azimuth adjusting area of the mount is able to be lit up with red LEDs using the hand controller. Very nice. The hand controller also has a red LED torch much like the PME's.
Both axes has a 3 way switch to enable fast balancing.
The PMX also has a USB hub on dovetail area which works well. My PME has older parallel ports and no USB on the dovetail area. So that means far less cable clutter. Also the 12 volt power outlet is accessible by a simple 2.5mm centre pin positive lead with 2 plugs coming off of it (one for the filter wheel and one for the guide camera).
I had no trouble connecting my cameras through this.
I am looking forward now to a clear night to do a quick polar align (I am not sure if this is a new feature or if its been around with the PME but its very cool, using the home feature you can do a quick and accurate polar align even during the day in a few minutes).
This will be my APO imaging setup. At the moment it'll be AP140 at F5.6 and TEC110 also at F5.6 and Microline 8300.
I'll post some photos of it tomorrow.
Greg.
It is well packaged and looks fantastic.
The colour is slightly different to the PME - slightly pinker and brighter in colour. It looks very well made.
A few minor hiccups.
The serial numbers for the software aren't where they say it will be in the manual (on the shipping box) but rather underneath the white foam the mount sits on - which is a bit hard to remove from the box and is the last place you would look. Anyway.
The driver for the Mks5000 system also is not on the supplied CD so the instructions on how to load it fail. A quick search on the SB PMX forum shows it as a download on the SB site once you have registered your mount.
It isn't that much smaller than the PME and sits just a bit lower overall.
It oozes finesse and careful construction. Like a Takahashi scope.
It has some nice touches over the PME. The adapter plate worked very well and meant I did not need to drill any holes to fit it to my existing pier plate. That was unexpected. The azimuth adjusting area of the mount is able to be lit up with red LEDs using the hand controller. Very nice. The hand controller also has a red LED torch much like the PME's.
Both axes has a 3 way switch to enable fast balancing.
The PMX also has a USB hub on dovetail area which works well. My PME has older parallel ports and no USB on the dovetail area. So that means far less cable clutter. Also the 12 volt power outlet is accessible by a simple 2.5mm centre pin positive lead with 2 plugs coming off of it (one for the filter wheel and one for the guide camera).
I had no trouble connecting my cameras through this.
I am looking forward now to a clear night to do a quick polar align (I am not sure if this is a new feature or if its been around with the PME but its very cool, using the home feature you can do a quick and accurate polar align even during the day in a few minutes).
This will be my APO imaging setup. At the moment it'll be AP140 at F5.6 and TEC110 also at F5.6 and Microline 8300.
I'll post some photos of it tomorrow.
Greg.