[g__day (Matthew)]

Well I finally stepped well away from trusty CG5 mount that has served me so capably, well above its weight class. It has carried scopes requiring 17kgs of counter balance, and tracked for 10 minute guided shot and done so remote controlled from another PC about 50 metres away.

So what am I on now - well I bought Looking Up second-hand Atlux and there is a significant difference - and not just weight.

So this weekend I re-drilled two of my Skywatcher 5 kgs weights (a 25mm drill bit costs $57 - two Vixen 7.3 Kgs would be 1-2 month waiting and $300 - $400 easy) and sandwiched a normal 5 Kg gym weight between them - perfect balance.

Mounting this beast to my pier needed a simply plug and re-drilling a 12mm diameter hole about 55 mm into soft Aluminum. That was the task from hell! Aluminum is so soft it grabs the drill bit out of the drill the moment it bites. It took about an hour to do this - involving much swearing.

Now I bought the power and signal cables I needed from Jaycar electronics - and left them at work - d'oh!

And a Vixen SkySensor2000-PC interface cable from Astro Optical (but I still need a 3-5 metre serial extender cable).

Domo arrigato gazhi mushati - is close to the full extent of my Japanese, so I had to search for a 140 page instruction manual in English. This took two days and I'm up to page 12 due to other jobs.

It functions - but the interface is very different to the Celestron and far more capable and complex (at least for me the display on the SkySensor is in English). I did get it to talk to Cartes Du Ceil too - so that was a plus!

On set up you have to start with the OTA horizontal facing East. I used to hibernate the CG5 pointing at the SCP. I haven't read yet whether the SS2000 has a hibernate function but I hope so!

The SS2K has several very impressive features. After a 3 star align I read it works out SCP alignment pointing error and either helps you fix it (by slewing to a star then showing the alignment error and getting you to manually move the mount Up/down or left and right to re-centre the star), or it simply compensates by running both motors at the correcting rate depending where in the sky you are looking, and compensates for the refractive index of the air at this position and compensates for the type of object you have targeted - star, comet or satellite.

I have to thank Steve for the great gear he's passed on to me. The more I learn its capabilities the more I'll be impressed I feel.

Some piccys follow. I will note now I really want to find a dovetail bracket that can handle the 75 mm wide CGE dovetail, rather than the 40 mm CG5 dovetail. Push the top of the SCT and it moves slightly - not because of the mount or pier - but because the CG5 is simply too narrow at the base to hold the OTA firmly. You see the bolts connecting the Dovetail to the OTA are only 20 mm separated - whereas the CGE bolts are 40 mm separated and the dovetails extends to about 120 mm wide - so it really holds the OTA stably. I'm thinking of machining my own dovetail bracket holder out of a 90 mm - 100 mm rod of aluminum or iron - about 20 mm - 25 mm thick! (two groves and a lock bolt or two, and the bolt holes to attach it to the mount and I'm done!).

Anyone know how wide the Losmandy dovetail bars and brackets that hold Celestron C9.25 OTA's are? I'd rather buy than build!