Advice requested

Hi,
Well, I am thinking of upgrading my mount for imaging to get more capacity and performance. Most know that I have a Losmandy G-11 with OVision worm and Mclennan gear boxes and it works well and has about 4" PE Peak to Peak with typical smoothness for a G-11, which is good. Is it as good as the MI-250, I do not think so, but it cost a lot less too.

I have the chance to buy a basically new Mountain Instruments MI-250 with a Pier and accessories for an excellent price. It has Peak to Peak PE of 2.1" uncorrected according to PEMPRO, with smooth graphs.

I am wondering if any has experience and comments about whether this would be a big upgrade. I know that they are really well made and I have seen them in the field and heard nothing but raves about the performance and capacity. I am looking for additional comments from anyone that knows about these mounts.
Thanks

Floyd, I have a ten year or older tangent arm MI-250. My older one works like a dream and I know improvements have been made to the newer ones. If you get a decent deal on a newer one I doubt that you will have much buyers remorse.

Hi Floyd,

I just went through exactly the same situation (perhaps it is even the same mount) where I considered upgrading to the MI-250. I have read nothing but good things about the mount and its tracking ability. At the end of the day though, the deal breaker for me was the use of the Gemini with the same motors as the the G11. I personally really like the Gemini system, the problem arises when something goes wrong. I had to send my Gemini controller in for repair (fried autoguider circuit caused by ????) two years ago and it took nearly 4 months to get it back. The weight capacity on the MI-250 is a little more than the G11 but for me (especially since I had just ordered the Ovision worm and not yet installed it) the cost/benefit just wasn't there. I decided to wait and save my money for an AP-900.

Just my opinion.

cheers,

Jeff