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Good article Geoff. Having owned a CG5 for a year or two - let me add some extra comments.
The DEC housing alignment marks being 180 degrees wrong happened to me on install - very annoying and Celestron technical support couldn't diagnose the problem or even accept it was happening (they told me no less than 5 times I simply couldn't be seeing what I described). Set up and align this way and you will find that 1 in every 3 slews would cause the motor housings to collide when its set up with DEC inverted. I had to send Celestron technical support a video before they would believe my problem! Still a Yahoo Groups website explained the error where Celestron Technical support couldn't even accept the error!
It's very annoying that the mount has no simple clock to allow it to remember last align on power off / on.
My first one died - dreaded unit error 15 (a power switch problem I believe) at month 6 - Andrews Comms got it fixed / replaced in about 3 weeks.
The elevation scale was about 3 degrees off (forget just the level bubble being wrong) - remove it, and hot glued it on correctly.
The tripod is quite good, but the stainless steel legs are looking slightly brown to me and they have been under a balcony for 5 months... hmmm?
Get or make a 4 pin cable to upgrade the firmware or control it VIA ASCOM from Cartes du Ceil - works a treat.
Auto-guiding with PHD was very good with this mount.
It can image well right up to 15 - 17 kgs counterbalance - in wind protected conditions - which greatly surprised and pleased me.
Its pointing and PE were within expectations for a mount costing round $1,200 at the time. I never did a MaxPoint run to really determine pointing accuracy after a 6 star set-up, but I'd guess its around +/- 2 degrees all over the sky.
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