1. Messages
  2. AP600 vs Mach 1

Re: AP600 vs Mach 1

Howard Ritter
 

I have a 600E (I think an early version, with no special capabilities) carrying a 155EDT. Can any upgrades be made to it, internally or in the hand controller? I may have asked George this earlier, in reference to internal mods, but this thread has made me wonder whether anything else might be done. My suspicion is that the answer is No, if it’s not a GTO mount.

—howard

On Mar30, 2022, at 0911, thefamily90 Phillips <thefamily90@...> wrote:

I have two AP 600 Goto mounts I use with a CP2 controller and modern keypad. I use them with my AP 155 F/7 and LZOS 130 F/9.2 and have experienced no problems at all. 

JimP 
From: main@ap-gto.groups.io <main@ap-gto.groups.io> on behalf of Ram <ramviswanathan@...>
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2022 12:41:03 AM
To: main@ap-gto.groups.io <main@ap-gto.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [ap-gto] AP600 vs Mach 1
 
I've owned an AP600E GTO mount upgraded to CP3 for around 10 years and used it exclusively for close to 4 years as one of my first mounts. I still have this mount. 
I have used this mount to carry an AP130 starfire and also an 8" RC. I believe it could easily handle much more. I only used the mount guided. 
The only issue I saw with this mount was a bit of stiction in the DEC axis. This is a very simple issue to fix -- just guide DEC in one direction only. It is pretty easy to figure out which direction the drift is in.
Within its limits it appeared to perform about equal to a mach1 that my friend was using.  The mach1 seems more robust and can carry a larger payload. 

The AP900 was a definite upgrade for me as I also started using a 12" telescope for imaging.
Join main@ap-gto.groups.io to automatically receive all group messages.