Well, I couldn’t wait until my son comes over tomorrow. I decided to try it myself, and was thrilled to find that, despite having just turned 77, I could wrangle the components of the 1600GTO onto the tripod by myself and assemble the mount in place.  It looks pretty imposing in the photo, but IRL, when I got it together and stepped back, my reaction was MY GOD THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.

Tomorrow the GTOCP4 and 155EDF go on it and I’ll start to RTFM and exercise the mount. When I think I understand its operation well enough, we’ll disassemble it and reassemble it in the back yard with the legs extended. I’ll probably do some imaging with the 155 first, but then swap it out for why I bought the 1600 instead of the 1100 – the Meade 16” SCT. For that, I definitely WILL need my son!

Thank you, Rolando, Marj, Amber, George, and the whole crew!

—howard