[mldee (Mike)]

Mine is mounted on a pier and when I first tested it with a CF RC8 and a Sharpstar HNT 150 newt on a side by side, with no counterweight, it was reluctant to return from vertical at meridian, see pic, weight of RC8 is 9.3kg, HNT is 7.2kg.

As port of my recent obs work, I added a DIY counterweight shaft (12mm threaded rod with some threaded joiners on it for further stiffening, plus 5kg of barbell weights, total about 30cm long. No problems now. I presume that the counterweight probably does help to take some of the load off the ARM5 motors, which should be a good thing, and the cost of the rod and used weights was only about $10 all up.