[gregbradley]

An update.

Going to do a few final tweaks of the building today to make the openings where the wheels go past the gable walls more weather proof.

I need to rotate the pier a bit now I know where the SCP is and to get the mount within it's adjustment movement for the pole.

I got my AP160GTO mount up and running again after a little mini disaster where several months ago by mistake I plugged the Software Bisque 48 volt transformer into the 12 volts AP1600 electronics and something blew in them.

I got a new upgraded GTO CP4 control board and installed it and it's all working well.

It took a few clear nights to get past the confusions that usually turn up when handle gear. But it's now nearly back to running nicely. Just need to do a new PE curve and install it and a new T Point model (not so needed when you do a closed loop slew that uses Plate Solving to get the target object in the middle of the screen).

I took my AP Honders to my dark site (only done that once before) and imaged with it. Wow, a new appreciation of it. 12 inch aperture at F3.8 with no need for collimation is lovely to work with. The FLI Atlas focuser is also great to work with. Joshua Bunn did a terrific job on a new adapter to replace a missing one.

At my home observatory my PME mount has been lying idle. I thought I'd damaged it by cutting off some redundant cabling to the dovetail outlets.
On closer inspection I saw that the power supply for the PME is 48 volts not the 12 I tried with. It's been years since I set it up so I'd forgotten about that.

I got a new 48 volt transformer power supply and was ecstatic to find the mount starts up like normal.

So today I finish the little fine points of cladding and waterproofing and then I install a dovetail bar and rotate the mount to closer to the SCP.

Then mount the scope, camera, computer etc ready for the next clear night.

The moving house, the blowing of the AP1600 board and then what I thought was damaging the PME's wiring all were a significant setback but it's all resolved now.

I also did some visual observing with an AP130 GT on an iOptron CEM70 mount. It was great on one night. Next night I discovered the dec axis has a metal pin that stops it from rotating past a certain point. It's not mentioned in the manual.

You have to rotate the dovetail until it hits that stop then rotate back 180 degrees then mount your scope otherwise on some slews the mount hits this metal pin stop. Annoying.

Otherwise that mount seems to be very good. I haven't imaged with it yet but next trip I will. I wanted to concentrate on getting the AP1600 operational - one battle at a time.

I have learnt to work on a problem and if it's not resolving not to get frustrated but to leave it overnight and get back to it fresh or check the forums for advice. It cost a few clear nights but I got there and most of the little tricks came back to me after quite a hiatus in imaging.

So my imaging setups are:

1. Astro-Physics Riccardi Honders 305 F3.8 on a Software Bisque PME mount (a reliable and simple to use mount).
2. AP 130 GT APO with Quad TCC or flattener giving either F4.5 or F6.4 and iOptron CEM 70 with iPolar on a pier outside my dark site observatory.
Imaging with either a QHY600M, FLI Proline 16803 or FLI MIcroline 16200 (probably, mostly the 16803.
3. Honders on the AP1600 at my dark site (taken there and taken home afterwards which is a bit of a chore as it's heavy). But those 800 metre altitude very dark skies are a continual source of wonder plus 12 inch aperture at F3.8 helps overcome limited imaging time. I found out the Honders sits a bit lower in my observatory and is not wind affected which is a huge plus.
4. Planewave CDK17 at F6.8 or with reducer F4.5 on the PME at my home observatory. It's a 2 man job mounting it though so it will be a while before I set it up.
5. CFF 105 F6 with flattener and FLI Proline 16803 or possibly QHY600M for either at home or my dark site where it could sit on the CEM70 mount so I could have this imaging whilst the Honders on the AP1600 is imaging (2 separate setups).
6. Mirrorless camera setups - Canon EOS R(a) - Ha modded EOS R and Sigma Art 14mm F1.8 or Samyang 21mm F1.8 or Samyang 135mm F2. Mount would be piggybacking on the CEM70 or Skywatcher GTi mount or Unitec Swat 330 tracker or Fornax Lighttrack 11 on a Vixen tripod and William Optics wedge. The Lighttrack is handy as it's light and works well for nightscapes where weight does come into it. I haven't used the GTi yet but I will. The Swat 330 gave me fairly round stars in a ASIAIR plus polar alignment and 14mm F1.8 x 5 minute exposures. 2 minutes at F4 or F5.6 and ISO1600 will most likely be my default for tracked nightscapes. There are endless beautiful coastal scenes down here on the south coast of NSW.

A lot to get on top of but a lot of fun too (well, mostly!).

I plan to be back in full swing imaging as of this week. I already did 2 successful nights of imaging the last few days at my dark site.

Greg.