[billdan (Bill)]

Hi Ben,

There's always a risk importing expensive gear from overseas, in the event of a serious malfunction, the equipment has to be returned to its mothership for warranty repair, which of course is expensive in shipping costs.

I had this in the back of my mind when I ordered my Mesu 200 mount 2½ years ago, and the fact I was the first user in Australia and possibly the Southern Hemisphere. So I also had that guinea pig feeling as well, that the software may not work below south of the equator.

But after receiving the mount and setting up, everything worked perfectly, with only minor tweaks to its clock rate to allow me to get 0.7arcsec tracking with no guiding (0.4 with guiding).

The JTW mount I have never heard of before and reading its specs it seems the base model is shipped without encoders, whereas the Mesu gets 2 encoders per axis, one for the each motor and one for each axis shaft.

The other unkown is the control software supplied by JTW, the FreeGo2 is open-source which may mean it is not very advanced and may require user feedback (guinea pigs) to improve the system. Many years ago when ASA introduced their new mounts they come in for heavy criticism for poor software that was supplied back then. Mesu use the Si-Tech control system which is advanced and is used by many different mount manufacturers around the world.

Out of the two choices, you have Mesu with a strong user base and little bad feedback, versus JTW with an unknown mount that looks good on paper but no user base.

Thats my opinion anyway
Cheers
Bill