Paramount PMX mount

[gregbradley]

Reluctantly I am selling my fairly new Paramount PMX mount. The only reason I am selling is because my AP Honders scope and imaging gear exceeds the manufacturers capacity for this mount. Even so I still get round stars but its at the limit.

I bought this new in Nov 2011. I got a replacement worm and the new worm is very very good. Around 3.5 Arc seconds PE without PEC and around 1 to 1.5 arc seconds with the already installed perfect Pempro PEC curve. I did several PEC curves and this one is the best.

I recently regreased the gears with the manufacturers recommended grease and it made a nice difference.

It comes with the Sky X, TPoint, Precision PEC, Camera Plug in softwares.

The best guiding I have ever achieved with any mount (PME included) was with this mount about 2 months ago with an AP140.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/159562180

The mount does not have any defects and comes with stainless steel counterweights. It has a Versaplate mounting plate with a large dovetail plate to accept your scope already fitted (that was extra when I bought it).

The PMX has some nice features. Its lightish. It has the fabulous home feature so if anything ever gets confused you simply click on home and it resets itself to a known position. The 3 way switch makes it easy to balance the mount. It will image 2.5 hours past the meridian (this was handy recently for an imaging run). Its easy to polar align. The integration with the Sky X and various software is a very appealing aspect of a Paramount mount. They work together very well.

Its been kept covered and in an observatory and only had light use as I mainly used it at my dark site and I only went there 5-6 times a year on average for a few days so its total use is probably in the low hundreds of hours.

I paid about $12,500 Aussie all up when I bought it.

Price is $9,000 + shipping.

Here is a photo:

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/139386413


Greg.

[RobC]

Hi Greg,

A couple of questions re PMX mount.

(1) What other items are required to make this mount operational.
(2) How up to date is the software and is it Win7/Win8 64 bit compatible.
(3) Are software updates free and automatic.
(4) What is the maximum payload for mount.
(5) What is the maximum unguided exposure time.
(6) Can you provide a link to a raw unprocessed sub.

Cheers

Rob

[E_ri_k]

Pm'd you Greg

[gregbradley]

[QUOTE=RobC;1186339]Hi Greg,

A couple of questions re PMX mount.

(1) What other items are required to make this mount operational.

It would have to be mounted on a pier or a tripod.

(2) How up to date is the software and is it Win7/Win8 64 bit compatible.

The software has regular updates. I run the Sky X on the latest daily build.

(3) Are software updates free and automatic.

Yes I think so. Not automatic you have to download the latest. I haven't bothered with camera plug in as all mine work with what I downloaded. Its mainly the Sky X. I haven't actually checked if there is a later TPoint. I will.

(4) What is the maximum payload for mount

Software Bisque state 40.3kgs. I think it would depend on the length of the scope. Ideally you would be under that.

(5) What is the maximum unguided exposure time.

Don't know. It would depend on the focal length. I use autoguiding. The idea that you can do 10 minutes without autoguiding on any mount (except the absolute encoder types) is somewhat of a myth in my experience. I also have a PME and its the same. An FSQ that weighs nothing and is short focal length could probably go several minutes but a CDK with 2.5 metre focal length and much heavier may only be 90 seconds like any mount. Its the guide error and PE figures that matter. This one is around 1.5 arc secs with PEC which is very low.

(6) Can you provide a link to a raw unprocessed sub.

I could post one. The image I did post is fairly large if you click on original at the bottom of the image. You'll see stars are perfectly round and pinpoint.

[RobC]

Greg,

Thanks for the update. I will pm you tomorrow.

Rob