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Thanks Mark. Its good they fixed it up. It certainly looked like an excellent mount and had good fit and finish but the finer parts you mention obviously let it down at the time.
Greg.
I own both sphinx mounts, the SXW (the type you had??) and the SXD. They may look similar but are two very different mounts. The SXW has stiff axes because it does not have bearings on either the dec or RA axes (I have pulled mine apart) nor does it have bearings on the worms. Mine does have autoguiding, perm Pec etc etc. I have managed to take some nice pics with this mount. The SXD, however, has bearings in all axes as well as the worms. This along with more powerful (but noisier) drive motors and more precise worm gear/worm wheel has significantly increased payload and accuracy of the mount and it is a breeze to use for AP. The PE on these mounts has been measured at +5/-7 which is fair and I have no problems with 15min exposures when autoguiding. The latest software update has been specially written for the southern hemisphere and fixes all the bugs the previous version had in tracking in the south. Sure they are not in the same league as the Tak or Paramount mounts but are very light and portable which is why I bought it. They certainly are no junk by any measure of the stick.
Cheers
Mark[/QUOTE]
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