Pme mkii

[Peter Ward]

Just returned from the PATS show in Pasadena.

The vendor list was decidedly smaller than previous years, and not much new to report...or so I thought.

Dropped by the Software Bisque booth and noticed what looked like a PMX on steroids.... it was in fact the PME MKII. Very tidy unit.

Sorry about the attached pic, but all I had was an i-phone camera...

Very impressive specs. 240lb payload. Ordered one on the spot. They should be shipping in the New Year and provided the $A stays up at around $15k in GST will be pretty hard to beat.

[Moon]

Beat you to it!

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?p=898144#post898144

I'm sure it will sell like hot cakes.

James

[Peter Ward]

It's hard to follow every IIS thread, but good pick-up.

Hot cakes ? Nah...I strongly suspect, in Oz at least, there will only be a handfull of takers.

But kudos to Tom and Steve Bisque for their efforts.

The PME is in other ways a more "elegant" mount...no dead metal and much more (costly) machining. The PME MKII however takes that turbo-4, away, and simply plugs in a V-8...:)

[gregbradley]

There are issues that could easily be duplicated on the PME11.
The 3 way balance switch whilst a good idea appears to be poorly implemented with severe gear slippage as regular occurrence posted by PMX users. This requires a sensitive and fussy in the field repair with not all the data you need to achieve it being posted by SB.

Sky X PEC often does not work.

Sky X drops out relatively easily. Simply turning your camera on and off can cause a comm error and it drops out. Never with Sky 6 which is much more robust. The extra finesse of the Sky X seems to have cost a small amount of robustness.

PE levels of PMX did not seem to be totally met every time. So QC issues there as well.

I'd say SB has to lift their game as AP would be totally reliable, totally dependable and everything works before it leaves the door. Not so with SB where you wear some of the QC Dept work for free.

PME is a reliable proven mount. Newest and latest isn't always better.
Still they need to move with the market and I am sure on paper it will sound wonderful. And they can over time resolve the bugs as I am sure they will. But its the period in between that can be unpleasant for the customer.

I am not satisified with my PMX or the backup and so could not recommend SB at this time.

Greg.

[frolinmod]

Note the new PME II page here (http://www.bisque.com/sc/pages/ParamountMEII.aspx). Also note that it isn't quite a simple MX scale up. There are both obvious and subtle differences.

[Peter Ward]

Then PME II has a number of design differences to the PMX, so it would be a long bow in my book to predict its performance from an albeit similar but clearly not the same product, sample of one.

I've had dealings with a number of PMX's recipients and the only hiccough was with the PE on Chris' mount...a new worm was shipped out which fixed the problem. Data dropouts can be easily caused by a hub, cable, host PC, etc. funnily enough they rarely get blamed.

[pluck]

It's been a long time coming - and looks pretty much like you'd expect. It makes sense for SB to rationalise their design, particularly in light of the MEs unusually over-machined construction.

No surprises in the changes to the instrument panel, though most ME owners have long solved the idiosyncrasies of an instrument panel that provides a parallel port in a world that has used USB CCD cameras for many years. Still, an obvious and welcome change for new purchasers. As is through the mount cabling without disassembly - particularly for permanent and robotic installations.

Load capacity is an interesting one. The ME was released in an era when the C14 represented 'large' (in fact, SB used to sell them). The appearance of 24" and larger instruments mounted on them and the subsequent release of the extension counterweight shaft hinted at the need for something with larger capacity - particularly with respect to balancing. If anything, it wouldn't have surprised me to see a slightly larger successor.

Tracking well past the meridian has never really bothered me, I get nervous about pier strikes. Still there does seem to be a lot of photographers out there that have desperately wanted this for a long time.

Notable improvements in motor size and torque - though I've never heard of any problems with the current motor, except in poorly deployed examples (a larger motor may not necessarily cure issues associated with user error).

Bigger bearings too. Same as above. (In short, a very nice german equatorial capable of carrying a large telescope).

RA gear is still 11.4", so perhaps not much will actually change in the default performance and accuracy of the drives. I'm betting it will have the same advertised range of default PE and pointing (the latter dependent more on software these days).

PEMPro can get my 4" peak to peak ME down to 0.4" without much trouble, so the jury is still out with respect to the optional on-axis encoder - though much will depend on the cost of that option. Plus everyone (except me) guides these days. Back in the old days, PE actually meant something.

In short, a worthy, slightly overdue and not totally surprising successor to the ME - certainly a nice companion to the smaller MX on the Bisque showroom floor.

Paul