Telescope Reviews: AT Voyager and JMI MicroSlew

Hello Dorothy, I am glad to hear that everything went together will for you. I'd love to see a picture of your set-up with the Lunt. Been eyeing those but don't want to spend the $$ right now. They look really well made.

I did not wind up using that "screwdriver" for anything. I assume it is for using on the tensioners for the alt and az, but I find I can get the set just by hand. One thing I did encounter when assemblying my mount is that when I unscrewed one of those tension screws, no only did the screw come out, but the chrome base that the tension screw screws into. So I wound up using a little Loc-Tite to secure the chrome base in its threaded hole in the head assembly and then screwing the tension screw back into the chrome base. Did that for both the alt and az tensioners.

To your other questions: The motors do not allow tracking. The hand controller operates one motor at a time. There is a switch that is used to select which motor, either alt or az. There are two red buttons on the controller which operate the direction of the motors. At first I thought it was going to be awkward in operation, having to switch back and for between motors, but it worked well in practice. Much more comfortable than having reach each of the knobs to manually turn them. The motors come attached to mounting plates that then are attached to the Voyager mount, one at the point that the alt head attaches to the ext arm and the other at the point where the ext arm attaches to the az assembly. JMI has done a good job of making sure their stuff can be mounted securely. Once the motors are attached it is not possible to use the slo-mo knobs as the motors create too much resistence. In order to use the knobs, you would have to loosen one set screw on the shaft that connects the motor to the slo-mo shaft. Not a convenient thing to do if one wanted to switch back and forth between the motorized control and manual control. But if you had a motor failure while observing, it would be very easy to go back to manual slo-mo using the knobs provided you had the allen wrench available to disengage the motor from the shaft.

As far as the extention tube, to install all you need to do is loosen the three set screws where the az assembly attaches to the tripod (at that shinny aluminum collar) The head then unscrews from the shinny aluminum collar, the ext tube is screwed on to the tripod and secured with the three set screws and then the mount head is screwed onto the ext tube and secured with three new set screws provided with the ext tube. I needed the ext tube since I am 6'-4", so it was a bit low without the extention. I do use a Star Bound adjustible chair when observing, but there are just times with I like to stand. You may find that you are OK without the extention.

- David