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Interesting products... definitely headed in the right direction.
I'm not entirely convinced I'd want a gear-driven mount with a high res encoder on RA but not declination. When you're imaging at 0.5"/px like I am, very small amounts of backlash become very big problems. When you guide at < 1x sidereal on RA backlash isn't a problem, but for declination it can be a serious problem.
I'd be of a mind to stick the encoder on the declination axis instead of RA and rely on modelling to solve for repeatable errors in RA.
I've owned a few mounts now, some driven entirely by belts, some entirely by gears and some using a combination. I don't think I'll ever buy another gear driven mount without a high quality encoder on DEC.
Personally if I needed a high capacity mount in that rough price range I'd be leaning towards a Mesu over this latest offering from SW, although I do worry about those friction drives in our climate...
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