Dear AMers,
I recently acquired a loving maintained, pristine Losmandy G11 with all the bells and whistles, but with the 492 Digital Drive (no GOTO). Took it out last night, Polemastered, put in a high mag EP, put Saturn in the center of the FOV, walked away for an hour, came back, and wow, there it was, still dead center! They weren't kidding about this baby.
With the Losmandy worship over, let me get to the point. I want to use the G11 as my primary AP mount, (probably my last as well) which I know I could probably do as is, but I also got an ASIAir Pro to unify remote control. This means adding GOTO. I see four ready-made options out there: (a) Gemini 2, (b) OnStep (Instein kit), (c) EQ Star, and (d) EQDrive. Doing the Gemini 2 upgrade would be preferable, but the total cost (mount + upgrade kit) will be the same as getting a new G11G, with all the advantages that it begets. OnStep seems very attractive from a price perspective, but I haven't been able to find much about online about how well it works, especially with things like ASI Air. I am not much of a tinkerer, so I need something that more or less works out of the box. That excludes the the last two, for which I have seen numerous problem reports, most probably fixable with effort.
This being the situation, I would like to seek advice on the best path forward. I could, (a) sell the older G11 and buy a new G11G, (b) get OnStep and hope that it works, (c) forget the GOTO and use the good old hand-push. I was pretty good at doing that, but it's been more than 30 years. I don't know much about plate solving yet, so wondering if it is possible to use it as a poor man's GOTO? That is, move the scope to the general area, and have the plate solver tell me which way and how much to move?
Thanks, Anurag
I recently acquired a loving maintained, pristine Losmandy G11 with all the bells and whistles, but with the 492 Digital Drive (no GOTO). Took it out last night, Polemastered, put in a high mag EP, put Saturn in the center of the FOV, walked away for an hour, came back, and wow, there it was, still dead center! They weren't kidding about this baby.
With the Losmandy worship over, let me get to the point. I want to use the G11 as my primary AP mount, (probably my last as well) which I know I could probably do as is, but I also got an ASIAir Pro to unify remote control. This means adding GOTO. I see four ready-made options out there: (a) Gemini 2, (b) OnStep (Instein kit), (c) EQ Star, and (d) EQDrive. Doing the Gemini 2 upgrade would be preferable, but the total cost (mount + upgrade kit) will be the same as getting a new G11G, with all the advantages that it begets. OnStep seems very attractive from a price perspective, but I haven't been able to find much about online about how well it works, especially with things like ASI Air. I am not much of a tinkerer, so I need something that more or less works out of the box. That excludes the the last two, for which I have seen numerous problem reports, most probably fixable with effort.
This being the situation, I would like to seek advice on the best path forward. I could, (a) sell the older G11 and buy a new G11G, (b) get OnStep and hope that it works, (c) forget the GOTO and use the good old hand-push. I was pretty good at doing that, but it's been more than 30 years. I don't know much about plate solving yet, so wondering if it is possible to use it as a poor man's GOTO? That is, move the scope to the general area, and have the plate solver tell me which way and how much to move?
Thanks, Anurag
