Avalon Linear

[codemonkey]

After a relatively uneventful trip from Germany, my Avalon Linear has arrived. As my laptop has just gone back for repair, and it's cloudy tonight (and for the foreseeable future), I can't speak to much more than the aesthetics and the machining at this stage.

You have to dismantle the wedge and make an adjustment to use the mount at our latitude. It's relatively straight-forward, and there's instructions and photographs included in the manual (which comes on a nice little USB stick).

Also at our latitude, you can no longer use the "front" altitude knob, but rather you must swap it out for a hex head bolt. This bolt leaves a tiny, tiny gap between its head and the mount, and I fear adjusting it may be tedious. I'll report back on that once I've actually tried to polar align it, but for now I have my reservations.

The mount comes with an adapter plate, enabling you to mount this on tripods made for the EQ6. Photos show how this attaches on the stock EQ6 tripod. Just to make that doubly clear, the ugly tripod shown did not come with this mount, that's the stock-standard Skywatcher EQ6 tripod.

I'll have to drill a couple of new holes in my pier to mount this, however I'm happy to do so because I think it'll hold a lot better than the "one thread up through the bottom" it currently has to work with on the EQ6.

The mount comes with 1x6kg counterweight. Thinking I'd need an extra counterweight to balance my gear, I bought an aftermarket 2.6kg Baader counterweight (simply because the Avalons were out of stock). Turns out the 6kg counterweight balances my 12.3kg payload fine. Photo with the Esprit shows the counterweight position when balanced.

I'll post more when I get a chance to use it, but it may be a while. I need to get my laptop fixed, and I need to build this thing a new "micro-obs" (glorified ply box) to live in.

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Lee, certainly looks neat with the Esprit aboard :thumbsup:

See what you mean about the front alt bolt...at least you will be pier mounting and should only have to adjust the once...

[glend]

Very nice Lee! That arrived pretty quick from Germany. Re the tripod I am sure you could get some rose coloured paint somewhere to get the white parts of the tripod to match, or even black would look good.

[raymo]

You could always spray the entire tripod with the exact same colour
paint as the mount.
raymo

[Slawomir]

Congratulations Lee and thank you for sharing photos and you first impressions with your new mount. Maybe a shorter bolt would help in making polar alignment easier? But otherwise the mount looks great and it is also very neat that a 6kg counterweight easily balances your telescope.

[Atmos]

Looking pretty sexy Lee, being red and all :P
That hex bolt doesn't look like they had us southerners in mind when they were building it. At least you're going to have it permanently mounted so even if it is a bit fiddly, you'll only have to do it the once :)

[codemonkey]

Cheers Dunk. I expect I'll have to adjust the alignment occasionally, I currently do, but I'm not sure of the underlying cause there so it could be resolved with the improved fastenings on this vs the EQ6.



Cheers Glen. I did pay for express shipping; I thought I recalled once before that the standard post didn't have tracking, and I wanted to keep an eye on such an expensive package.

I'm not all that phased about the tripod matching, I'll probably rarely, maybe never, actually use it since this will live on a pier. I posted the tripod shots more so those who were thinking about this mount as an upgrade from their (AZ-)EQ6 could see how that worked.



True. Thanks raymo :-)



Cheers Suavi. A smaller bolt would likely make that easier. It's a standard M8 bolt but with a (rounded) bull nose. I'm not sure if such tips are frequently called something else though, since a quick google didn't turn up much.

I'm not sure how feasible it is, but it might also help to intentionally adjust the mount before trying to align so that all of your adjustments are made with the rear knob, and you just adjust the hex bolt to take up the slack.



You'll also have to swap out the rear adjustment knob for the hex head bolt (instead of the front, as opposed to in addition), if you live in altitudes between 45 and 70 degrees apparently. Looks like they optimised for Europe and North America, where you also don't have to dismantle the wedge either.

One other thing that I noticed this morning is that the supplied power cable with cigarette lighter plug is at a guess around 40cm long, so if you use those it's likely you'll need to BYO.

The mount does also come with an AC power adapter, but it has an eu plug on the end so if you plan on running it on AC you'll need an adapter. That's to be expected considering I bought a mount from an EU retailer, but just something to consider so that you can have everything ready to go when it lands.

The polar scope at the rear doesn't seem to have a cover either, so there's some potential for that to get damaged, not that I'll ever actually use that anyway.

[raymo]

The altitude adjusting bolt problem is quite strange for an expensive piece of gear; it looks like the original adjusting bolt couldn't be used anywhere
between + or - around 35* which would mean that the bottom end of it's country of manufacture would just scrape in.
raymo

[codemonkey]

Hmm, you're right, raymo. Having another look at the manual there's some incorrect information. It has two photos, both of which are labelled "For latitudes from 45° to 70° insert the hex head M8 screw in the polar scope side as in the picture", only one of which has the hex head bolt on the polar scope side. I'm not sure what the actual limits are.

Following is a direct quote from the manual regarding the three positions the mount can be adjusted to:

"As mentioned, the LineAR is designed to work at latitudes between 10° and 70°. To obtain such a wide range of latitudes, the mount is provided with a gusset with three positions. Position 1 enables height adjustment from 10° to 31°, position 2 between 32° and 55° and the position 3 between 56° and 70°.
On delivery the gusset plug is set for the latitudes of Europe and North-Central United States."

On a positive note, I plugged the mount in today and moved it around a bit. It's whisper quiet, as may be expected from an all-belt drive system. Not a big deal for me, but it matters to some people.

Edit: Oh, and adjusting the rear altitude knob at least is really smooth, even with my full payload on it, which is nice. That should go a long way to making alignment easy, and it's a world apart from my experience with two NEQ6's, which were both very difficult to adjust at all in altitude, let alone making fine adjustments.

[raymo]

It's interesting that they have chosen to utilise the Synta Synscan system. It would seem that it is in their opinion
a tried and tested system that suits their mount.
Have you sorted out how to set up for your latitude? It seems
you can use both handles when the latitude is in the mid range,
but you have to use the hex headed one on one side or the other
when the latitude is very high or low. Not having seen the mount
in the flesh, so to speak, I have no idea how you change the position
of the gusset plug mentioned in the manual.
raymo

[glend]

Well it is 'Made in Italy' after all, and like Italian cars, you can probably expect a few idiosyncrascies in the controls in exchange for the design/beauty of the mount. If it is running Synscan then at least you have a known system with support.

[codemonkey]

I've got the newer version of the mount which uses Avalon's own StarGO system instead of the initial Synscan version. I haven't really used it so I can't offer any thoughts on that yet. My guess is they were going for a Minimum Viable Product approach with this mount, and the Synscan version was a way for them to get something to market quickly.

You're spot on with the latitude adjustments. The 5th photo I posted in the original post shows the wedge dismantled for the adjustment. You basically move that bronze block to one side or the other (three settings, default in the middle), depending on your latitude.

I've got about 2mm of a gap (looks like more in the photo) at a rough approximate of my latitude. I don't know how accurate the scale is either, so I'm not really going to know whether it's ok until I try to align it, which probably won't be for a good week or more.



It is a little odd, but given all the things they fixed in comparison with the EQ6, I'm ok with it as long as it works :)

[billdan]

Congratulations Lee on your new baby, it must be a really good mount, going by the amount of cloud and rain we've had the last few days.

If you have only 2mm clearance at 27° S, what would the clearance be in Darwin?

Cheers
Bill

[codemonkey]

Cheers Bill. Must be awesome indeed with the threats of flash flooding and super-cells!

I think the clearance would be zero. The bolt head touched the mount at around 25 degrees. I've contacted Avalon about this, as I hear they're very responsive to users and keen to improve their products, so I expect this will no longer be an issue very shortly. I'll update the thread when I heat back from them.

[raymo]

According to the manual, position 1 is for 10-31*, so, as Darwin is over
12* there should surely be sufficient clearance, which there wouldn't
be with my HEQ5 unless using a small scope which allows the
counterweight to be up close to the mount body.
raymo

[codemonkey]

While adjusting the mount for latitudes closer to the equator does cause the hex head bolt to go in further, it's not enough. The adjustment is such that while the bolt moves further in, the rate of change in the mount head means that it "moves in" faster than the bolt.

See attached. At ~25 degrees, the bolt head is touching the mount and I cannot turn it without marring the surface.

At ~35 degrees there's maybe 5mm gap.

Good point though, it's counter-intuitive and I'd have questioned it had someone else posted it too.

[Kunama]

Beautiful mount! I would be off to the local specialty bolt supplier for a shorter bolt. (-10mm)

[raymo]

Surely it would only take a few minutes to shorten the bolt as Kunama said, and configure the cut off end to it's pre-existing shape.
raymo

[codemonkey]

Cheers mate. -10mm is exactly what I need :-)

I heard back from Avalon this morning and it seems it shipped with a 55mm when I need a 45. They've suggested a very quick solution would be to break the plastic off one of the original altitude adjustment knobs as it is otherwise the correct size.

On the way in to work this morning I was thinking that given the extra length on the bolt, I wonder if the mount would work in its original configuration: the extra bolt length may offset the position. I'll give it a shot tonight when I get home.



Maybe; can't say I've ever tried to cut down a bolt and then reuse it. Seems like a high risk of ruining the thread and then not being able to use it at all?

[raymo]

Having been both a flight engineer and a marine engineer, I would have
popped out to the shed and modified the bolt in a few minutes. It never
occurred to me that many people have never done this sort of thing.
Lee, I think it very likely that you have a friend or work colleague who
could shorten the bolt and configure it's end to it's pre-existing shape.
I think it unlikely that the long bolt would work in the mount's original configuration. I think it's range of travel is very limited, hence the need for three different positions.
raymo

[glend]

Lee I laughed when I saw their instructions to you about the bolt:

"I heard back from Avalon this morning and it seems it shipped with a 55mm when I need a 45. They've suggested a very quick solution would be to break the plastic off one of the original altitude adjustment knobs as it is otherwise the correct size."

When you spend that sort of money I don't think it is too much to expect it to be shipped with the right bolts, or even a selection of them if they are latitude dependent.

Seems they are getting noticed more, I ran across a discussion on the Avalon M-Tre this morning on CNs. I can't find any detail of the M-Tre mount on the Avalon website but it looks great in the photos on CNs. A Flipless mount I believe.
Link on CN here:
http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/511862-avalons-new-mount-the-m-tre/

[Camelopardalis]

Not making excuses for them, but most of the affluent-enough world (their target demographic) would live above 25 degrees latitude. Below 25 degrees is clearly an oversight ;) ... or should that be undersight :lol:

[Slawomir]

Putting the bolt issue aside, it is clearly an awesome mount - judging by the clouds and humidity it attracted to our part of the world!

[RobF]

Amen :lol:

[Atmos]

Such is the mount that it has clouded over Melbourne for the last two weeks!

[codemonkey]

Ah, if only I had that kind of background. I'm an engineer of the software variety and though I'm trying to expand on my meagre DIY skills, I'm definitely lacking in that area.



They've had a bit more notice over in Europe I think. The tre is just the big brother of the zero and the uno; all interesting mounts. Not having to do a meridian flip would be nice for those of us using OAG, but the mount design limits the usage to short tubes.

You might get more of a laugh out of this: I actually did break that knob off. That bolt was also 55mm, the same as the original one that was too long.



lol







Sorry guys! On the bright side, I'd rather get all the terrible weather out of the way while I'm still trying to build the mount's new home and get my computer fixed.

As for whether the mount will work in Darwin, it's a definite no. The manual gives two different ranges, one saying it works from 10 degrees, the other 15. I can confirm that it's the latter that is correct. The gusset hits the wedge at about 15 degrees, so without modifying the wedge to be wider, there's no way you can go below ~15.