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Thanks Roger and Dave. It was both your wonderful images with an Astrotrac that convinced me of this mounts abilities.
Roger, drift aligning the astrotrac does take some time. Since I don't have an eyepiece in my set up and I am not using PHD to autoguide, the drift alignment consists of getting close using an altimeter and compass, then pointing at a star at the meridian as you would for normal drift alignment; taking initially 30 sec image, making an adjustment in azimuth till the star is round at 30 sec (guess a direction and see if it is getting better or worse); then going up to a minute and repeating. Usually try to get at least 3 minutes with no noticeable drift, though have gone as long as 7 minutes.
then repeating with a star on the western horizon for altitude correction-usually this doesn't need a huge change as I am back at the same dark site.
Find I sometimes need to tweak again in azimuth after getting the altitude right.
It is not as bad as it sounds but it is not a 5 minute job. And I have the astrotrac wedge
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