[gregbradley]

I have been lusting after one of these Japanese nightscape mounts made by Unitec for a couple of years. The SWAT series, which are not well known and mostly used in the Japanese market. It's super well made.

This is a new one that is a lot cheaper than the higher model yet is much the same in performance.

Can you believe this little nightscape mount is rated to a 15kg payload! Also has PEC from the factory in it that gets it down below 6.5 arc seconds.

I used ASIAIR Plus to do a polar alignment with both RA and Dec below 0 minutes. I was able to get 135mm lens focal length 5 minute subs with fairly round stars, A few parts were not tight so I can probably do a bit better tonight.

The setup is slightly heavy though. It would be a lot lighter on a carbon fibre mount. I am using a power bank to power it and the asiair plus.

Greg.