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Just read tis. Congrats Mike. AP1600 GTO woohooo. That's what I have my CDK mounted on.
Very ruggedly built.
I use a power supply I got from Jaycar so it gets enough grunt.
Quite easy to use. Its probably a bit more accurate in tracking than my PME but relatively similar.
Are you getting the latest control box? Is this a new mount or a 2nd hand?
I could upgrade my control unit for around at one stage US$1100 and I think that allowed a home position which is the main thing I would want I miss from the PME. A home position is very handy.
I also use the AP timer and also a free little program that monitors the mount and won't let it hit the pole. If it does hit the pole it simply shuts the motor off.
I run the AP1600 through the Sky X and have a PE curve I made using Pempro (very easy to upload). Its a very rugged piece of gear that is even more rugged than the PME. The shaft for example is 1.5 inches thick as opposed to 1 inch thick of the PME or something similar.
It will carry your gear with you standing on it and it will still give under 3 arc seconds tracking!!!! The motors are very strong.
Closed loop slews are handy. What that is is the scope slews to where the object should be then takes a photo and plate solves it and in one correction you have the object in the middle of the image. Saves a lot of time.
Using Sky X will probably be a big time saver long term. You just have to get used to the setting up of Tpoint (I find TPoint the best polar alignment tool so far, a bit awkward to setup but once it works its reliable).
The mount comes preloaded with a PE curve. That's also handy.
Greg.
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