Was it this one, by chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwVg1M6bURI

I saw a video once where a large OTA was mounted by putting the OTA vertical on a tall chair next to the mount, and then bringing the DEC axis to a vertical position to mate with the OTA. I cannot

Mine's not as heavy as yours, but I find loading much easier on park 2. With the scope pointing sideways, I get the bottom edge of the D plate into the bottom edge of the saddle, then tilt it back so

Hello, I am not new to the hobby but my current OTA makes the set up phase not easy at all. the diameter is 270mm and weight around 19 kg, and I don't feel confident in loading the telescope by myself

>>> not every telescope-related program runs on Win10 (like PHD2 perhaps), so I did not try to update. PHD2 definitely runs windows 10. I don't know about the original PHD, it hasn't really been in

Hi Roland, it is indeed very simple. My current workflow in TheSky6 is almost as simple as what you said, except that I have to click "establish" to link to the mount. Otherwise it's the same. So I

Wei-Hao, I would still rethink your workflow of Windows 7 on parallels. By now it's an 11 year old operating system that got obsoleted 8 years ago, and stopped getting security updates a year ago. As

Certainly for imaging you can bring as much firepower as you want. But that doesn't change what's needed for controlling the mount. All you need is a planetarium program that works in ASCOM mode.

Hi Roland, My "portable" includes carrying/bringing any whwere between 30 and 200 kg of equipments to fly to a different island/continent/hemisphere. The computer I carry does not only control the

Yup. Even though my telescope is pier-mounted in an observatory, and I use ACP for almost all of my imaging, I often use SkyX exactly this way before starting my ACP plan, to slew to a star for

For portable imaging, just get a keypad. You don't need anything else to connect to the mount. In my case if I am out for a short portable imaging session with the Mach2, I use only SkyX to connect

Haha! I never “leave” my Mac out. Because I am doing portable imaging, whenever my Mac is out, I am out. So technically this is not “leaving it out,” right? I did think about getting a very

Dan, those same downward forces can be had by just building the pier below ground larger than above ground. You don't need to build a cantilever at the bottom: It also seemed logical to me that you'd

+1 for getting a cheap windows PC to run the mount and your imaging software. I would not want to leave my nice Mac outside anyway. I still use my Mac for remote access and image processing. It is the

Hi, Got my Mach2 a couple of weeks ago. Looks great. Waiting to finish the observatory now. ExploraDome arrived today. One minor suggestion, and/or request for advice. Because my setup is tall, I

[...] Including embedding rebar in the footer so it extends upward to near the top of whatever projects above ground level. Remember the rebar! --- Mike

I keep my imaging computer completely off-line to prevent automatic updates. Roland

That's it. Getting a cheap pc laptop to control the mount and run all the necessary software is by far the most efficient solution of all. That's what I do, and then control that pc remotely from my

Virtually all soils, locations and environments are unique. Earthquakes, frost heaves, settling, moisture saturation, slope erosion, water table level, etc. all happen. Here in Hawaii, the younger

"...I'm going to auger out and pour a pier footer in the upcoming spring and I've been taking heavy notes from a good thread on the CN observatory forum called "Pier