Mini review of my new Orion Atlas EQ-G same as EQ6.
I have had the mount for a couple of weeks now, and find it very good so far with a few quirks!!
Its heavy but I new that. Not unmanageable but the eq head is heavy. The tripod is lighter than I thought. I did buy vibration pads. Not that I really needed them but I hate wobbly stuff. Is the maksutov a good match for this mount? For sure, the Mak is small but heavy. I’m not sure of the ota’s total weight but around 7kg! Maybe a bit more.
I can focus at any of my eyepiece’s magnifications up to 300x and its very smooth with no shaking. So the mak is fine on this mount and yeh it could take a bigger scope but I don’t have a bigger one.
After I did a drift alignment, had not done this for many years but it was easy!
I had Jupiter tracking with out any movement at 300x not sure of the time but over 20 minutes and more. In all it tracks as it should.
As for PE or the likes I did not measure this as I’m sure you need a camera to do so.
But any object tracked spot on at any magnification.
The motors are smooth and very quiet. There many tracking rates but at full slew it’s very nice with hardly any noise. Changing speed rates is easy and after a while it became second nature. Buttons are very positive but I keep going the wrong way at times!
The mount is easy and pretty quick to set up. lifting the eq head is the hardest bit, but if your careful no problems. Screw up the bottom tripod plate, then set the counterweight shaft the put the weight on then the tube and your away.
Plug in the hand controller then power it up and you’re away. Well one thought so. I have had some problems with the hand controller. It only seems to work in the “Go To” mode properly when I do a 3 star alignment. As I have only used the mount twice so far it’s still a bit of a learning curve. It can’t find Jupiter. And there are a few other things that are a bit peculiar! Like having to set the longitude to west not east! Anyway there is a new hand controller coming out soon and Bintel have been a help.
Apart form the controller issue this mount is very good. Not perfect. But I don’t have many thousands of dollars to spend on a EM 200 or G11. And so far I have been pretty happy with it. Once the controller is sorted I’ll be very happy.
Clear skies.
