Hey!
Well I have been doing lots of thinking and ringing up lots of people!
My mum is going to croak when she sees the phone bill!
I told her I was gonna call suppliers and stuff but I musta forgot the bit where they were overseas!!!
Never mind I am moving out to the work town soon so she can come and slap me out there.
So any how I have narrowed the choice down and then down again.
The first was the Takahashi EM-500 because its a Tak and I love Taks. My EM-11 is so great I will never part with it.
The Tak is not cheap but it sounds like it will be better made even than my EM-11 and I swear my EM-11 was made specially for me and not come from a factory. They are ace.
But to do remote obs I will have to get into nerd stuff like remote control software on a PC in the obs and it sounds dicey to me because I hate computers and am a spanner not a geek.
This is pretty sad because the Tak is awesome and I would be keen to stick with the brand. But maybe not the Tak.
Next is the Astrophysics 1200GTO. Awesome again but I have never seen any AP mount and I cant find any one in Aus with one to show me it. The seps I talked to on line reckon its totally the bomb and it seems pretty great from all I can see and what I read.
But its like the Tak I will need to run all sort of computery stuff to operate the mount in a remote obs so I decided probably not a 1200GTO then.
That brung me to the narrowed down choice!
First of all is the Paramount ME and I am gonna go see one next week. Yeah these are killer and sposed to be tops for remote stuff with NO nerdy crap so Im pretty keen. Every one knows about these so I dont have to tell you guys. This is a front runner.
The only fly in my soup is its not a directly driven mount it still has gears. When I talked to the guys that make it they said no to direct driving and they would not do it themselves ever. Funny that it is what the Astrophysics crowd said about direct drive to and that it was just a craze or some thing.
This worrys me because every thing is always moving forward in our game and the stuff that doesnt go forward gets left behind I reckon. But the Paramont is still awesome and I will see what I think when I go play with one!!!
Now whats left? Its that Austrain ASA Ddm mount the DDM85. All of the people saying steer clear worried me and I heard all kinds of storys about how bad they was. But I had to take a better look just in case right?
So I emailed the company and they shot write back and were pretty good with my questions even the really dumb ones!
So then I gave them a ring and talked for a bit. It wasnt that easy because of the language part but still they were no worse than the bloke down at the kebab place near my mums house and he always gets the order right. Any how they tell a blardy good story I have to say.
Then I emailed some guys on line I was talking to once before in Spain and Germany and places and they told me pretty great things about there DDMS.
Plus these are the new way with no gears. Thats the big selling point I think for me.
Here is how I look at it --- my job pays good and I have no wife or kids and stuff and its hard to spend money out there anyhow. My new mount will be payed off fast and if I make the wrong choice to be honest it wont really matter if you know what I mean. I can by the other one I should have got in the first place and use it in the obs and stick the wrong one in my bed room like a art display because they all look dam good!!!
So right now the choice is the Paramount Me or the ASA DDM. It will be a hard hard choice!!! ( Plus I really would love a big Tak! May be I will by one any way later if KRudd doesnt shut the mines down )
You guys wish me luck and I will tell you how it turns out later!