The issue on Chinese mounts has always been the machining; I think most of us are familiar with the "grease glue" alternative to precise machining, essentially the difference between a Vixen (real grease, close tolerances) and a CG5 (glue to take up tolerances the size of the grand canyon) in days of yore.
Though progress has been made in products from mainland China, they ain't there yet. One of the newer big name entries is the CGE Pro from Celestron. Rated at 90 lbs, these things cost $5k and come with a tripod. The uncorrected PE is 18 arc seconds peak to peak.
Seeing a mount at NEAF is not the same as a test drive. Seeing no polar scope on the mount, I was assured that you didn't need one because of the polar alignment protocol. Computerized modeling calculates how far off true N you are. You then go to a star and tel the computer you want to do a polar alignment correction. The computer looks at where the star is, relative to the mount, and where it would be if polar alignment where perfect. It moves the tube an offsetting distance.
The user then employs the AZ and ALT adjustments on the mount to get alignment star re-centered in your field of view. The motions shift your polar alignment to true N. Tell the scope that you have done that and presto you are polar aligned, or at least, better polar aligned.
Gemini users will recognize this subroutine which has been in their paddles for a decade.
What they won't recognize is the wrist breaking adjustment knob. I used a C14 on my G11 for years and even so it was always easy to adjust in altitude, even going "up" against the full weight of the C14. Not so with the CGE Pro loaded with a C14. Trying to turn the coarse threads was next to impossible. The handle is basically pushing down against a plate that looks glued to the mount and I am not sure how long it will stay there before it falls off. The solution, upon inspection, is that the handle has holes in it so you can stick something in to get some leverage.
This stick-in-handle solution first entered astronomy, so far as I know, via the AP900 and 1200 designs which are easy to turn (unlike the CGE pro) but hard to reach. The difficult-to-reach-altitude adjustment has been copied by an Italian company which essentially sand casted an early AP900 mount, painted it gold, and called it its own...with different drive mechanisms. And the hard-to-reach altitude adjustment is now being propagated by iOptron into an AP900 clone that will be streaming to our shores from China sometime soon--one was on display at NEAF. I note all this because Roland apparently saw the ease of use issue as important when designing the Mach 1 where forward placement of the altitude adjustment makes it as easy to use as on the Losmandy series. The Italians and Chinese are apparently not aware of these user issues, or are twenty years behind the times. ANYHOW...
By contrast the CGE Pro altitude adjustment is easy to reach but impossible to turn. I'm sorry to say that I have little faith in the casting of the altitude adjustment and would expect it to break in use. Since the adjustment will have to be used every time the mount is set up (except in an observatory) I find myself ill-at-ease with $5k on this piece of equipment and worry that if the critical altitude adjustment is sloppily executed that other parts I can't see will be sloppily executed too. So, on the one hand, we are light years ahead of the ancient CG5 of yesteryear, the one that made "astronomyboy.com" famous (he put up how to get the crappy grease out and de-burr the interior, with photos). But of course we are paying $5k for handles that won't turn rather than $500 for a mount that won't stay where it is pointed.
This is not what I would buy to get 90 lb capacity. I would go with a better mount and re-scale my optics to 50 lbs or so. Well: if all I wanted to do in the world is take web cam images of Jupiter and Saturn, this mount would do the trick. But for other stuff I'm not so sure.
That said, there is a significant workaround for a mount with a difficult altitude adjustment: level carefully every time you set up. When you do so Polaris is in the same altitude as last time you were out and most of your adjustment error will be in azimuth, which is easy. With the Losmandy mounts the altitude adjustment is so easy there is no real incentive to do anything more than a cursory leveling; it is a completely optional procedure, GEMs do not require being level. That said, the workaround of leveling works fine for an AP 900 or 1200 because once you have your hand on the adjustment knob you can in fact turn it. But the situation with the CGE Pro is considerably more difficult and I think we may infer from the 18 arc second peak to peak rating and the movement of the adjustments that this is a "rough" product.
regards
Greg N
Though progress has been made in products from mainland China, they ain't there yet. One of the newer big name entries is the CGE Pro from Celestron. Rated at 90 lbs, these things cost $5k and come with a tripod. The uncorrected PE is 18 arc seconds peak to peak.
Seeing a mount at NEAF is not the same as a test drive. Seeing no polar scope on the mount, I was assured that you didn't need one because of the polar alignment protocol. Computerized modeling calculates how far off true N you are. You then go to a star and tel the computer you want to do a polar alignment correction. The computer looks at where the star is, relative to the mount, and where it would be if polar alignment where perfect. It moves the tube an offsetting distance.
The user then employs the AZ and ALT adjustments on the mount to get alignment star re-centered in your field of view. The motions shift your polar alignment to true N. Tell the scope that you have done that and presto you are polar aligned, or at least, better polar aligned.
Gemini users will recognize this subroutine which has been in their paddles for a decade.
What they won't recognize is the wrist breaking adjustment knob. I used a C14 on my G11 for years and even so it was always easy to adjust in altitude, even going "up" against the full weight of the C14. Not so with the CGE Pro loaded with a C14. Trying to turn the coarse threads was next to impossible. The handle is basically pushing down against a plate that looks glued to the mount and I am not sure how long it will stay there before it falls off. The solution, upon inspection, is that the handle has holes in it so you can stick something in to get some leverage.
This stick-in-handle solution first entered astronomy, so far as I know, via the AP900 and 1200 designs which are easy to turn (unlike the CGE pro) but hard to reach. The difficult-to-reach-altitude adjustment has been copied by an Italian company which essentially sand casted an early AP900 mount, painted it gold, and called it its own...with different drive mechanisms. And the hard-to-reach altitude adjustment is now being propagated by iOptron into an AP900 clone that will be streaming to our shores from China sometime soon--one was on display at NEAF. I note all this because Roland apparently saw the ease of use issue as important when designing the Mach 1 where forward placement of the altitude adjustment makes it as easy to use as on the Losmandy series. The Italians and Chinese are apparently not aware of these user issues, or are twenty years behind the times. ANYHOW...
By contrast the CGE Pro altitude adjustment is easy to reach but impossible to turn. I'm sorry to say that I have little faith in the casting of the altitude adjustment and would expect it to break in use. Since the adjustment will have to be used every time the mount is set up (except in an observatory) I find myself ill-at-ease with $5k on this piece of equipment and worry that if the critical altitude adjustment is sloppily executed that other parts I can't see will be sloppily executed too. So, on the one hand, we are light years ahead of the ancient CG5 of yesteryear, the one that made "astronomyboy.com" famous (he put up how to get the crappy grease out and de-burr the interior, with photos). But of course we are paying $5k for handles that won't turn rather than $500 for a mount that won't stay where it is pointed.
This is not what I would buy to get 90 lb capacity. I would go with a better mount and re-scale my optics to 50 lbs or so. Well: if all I wanted to do in the world is take web cam images of Jupiter and Saturn, this mount would do the trick. But for other stuff I'm not so sure.
That said, there is a significant workaround for a mount with a difficult altitude adjustment: level carefully every time you set up. When you do so Polaris is in the same altitude as last time you were out and most of your adjustment error will be in azimuth, which is easy. With the Losmandy mounts the altitude adjustment is so easy there is no real incentive to do anything more than a cursory leveling; it is a completely optional procedure, GEMs do not require being level. That said, the workaround of leveling works fine for an AP 900 or 1200 because once you have your hand on the adjustment knob you can in fact turn it. But the situation with the CGE Pro is considerably more difficult and I think we may infer from the 18 arc second peak to peak rating and the movement of the adjustments that this is a "rough" product.
regards
Greg N
"Scope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no scope." --Freewheelin' Franklin
