If so this is a nice little mount. has anyone tried one?
These are similar also to the Porta mount but the Arm is longer and might provide more room for a larger scope.
Bintel has had these for a while now but I'm not certain of the pricing at the moment...I bought one of the first ones in country as I felt it was very well priced relative to the Vixen (which is what I was intending to buy originally). I've been pleased with the mount and I find it a good compliment to my ED80...
While I have not had much experience with other refractor mounts and may not be a good judge, for use wth the ED80 for moon and planets etc. it works a treat for me and my visual interests.
These mounts have been available at Bintel and Andrews for six months or more.
They differ from the Voyager sold in the US by having a plate for fixing tube rings to, rather than having a dovetail fitting. There is a GSO dovetail fitting available for $50 which fits.
I took my ed115 to Bintel to give this mount a test run and found it wasn't up to the task of holding this refractor satisfactorily. The tripods max height is also considerably lower than a Vixen porta mount. I believe the 20lb capacity rating to be overly optimistic.
I would not recommend this mount for anything but a short tube small refractor or maybe up to a 6" mak.
I have read rumours that GSO will bringing out a beefier model in the near future. If they can get it right it should be a good seller as there is a market void for a reasonably priced beefy alt-az mount just waiting to be filled.
Those mounts are much the same as a porta mount.
But on the andrews web site, http://www.andrewscom.com.au/site-section-10.htm
The mount is a SkyTee $499.
I copied this pic from the web site.
Wonder what it will carry?
That Tee mount looks much better. Its similar to the Giro mounts which are quiet well made. I had a quick look through Bintel and they have the mount I mentioned plus the also have a Skyview II listed which is about 100$ more I think it comes with a better tripod as it looks much the same. They also had a orion Alt/Az mount that looks like the Tee mount Dave mentioned. The Orion Tee mount is listed as bein easily able to carry a 9.25 SCT or 8" reflector easily. And that too it can carry the same weight on both sides.
I wonder how this Orion Alt/Az or GSO Tee mount compare to other Tee designs.
Had a play with the Orion AltAz (Tee) mount at Bintel on Saturday, looks the same as the photo posted by Dave47Tuk, on a steel-tube tripod with a Skywatcher 150mm Mak on it. Had a look through it with a decent magnification to see how it responded to vibration (very good).
The Andrews page suggests 10kg load and I'd say its reasonable - and you might want a counterweight (another scope).
It was solid enough - better than most of the portable equatorials I've tried over the past 30 years. The axes were a tad stiff though I suspect with a little use it will loosen up a bit (or maybe some WD40/graphite will do the trick). Clutches were a big vague with respect to knowing whether they were holding or not, so balancing the scope will be important.
Unless you're doing imaging/photography I really just don't see the point in an equatorial head, for visual hopping round the sky this is fine. The mounts I really admire for simplicity are the "tablet" and "stack" from Bray Imaging, they claim they can carry a C14 on one...
