[Ramsay11 (Stephen)]

I am a visual observer with no desire to incur the complexity or expense of astrophotography. Ideally, I would like a reliable, field-serviceable, motorized mount with the ability to track objects I have located and to add options later as I require. My current telescope is an ORION EON120 refractor on a Synta AZ4 AltAz mount and have been learning the night sky for the past 3 years so I have no desire for a Go-To system, but I do know how to set up an equatorial mount. I may migrate in future to a higher quality refractor of similar size or slightly larger aperture. After investigating expensive AltAz mounts such as Discmounts DM6 and Super Halfhitch with a quality tripod, their prices far exceed the cost of a Losmandy GM8 and would not leave much change in comparison to the purchase of a G11 (non Go-To).


The Chinese clones from Skywatcher, Atlas, Celestron are of no interest and the cost of the equivalent from Takahashi is off my radar screen.

My concern is the ability of the GM8 to handle a longer refractor and specifically it's tripod. I realize the G11 tripod requires assembly and the G11 system is twice the weight of the GM8 - so there is an impact on portability (or "grab-n-go) but can anyone from personal experience, shed some light on this important decision?

Cheers,

Stephen