Telescope Reviews: DM-4 on Stellarvue TSL5

My TSL5 arrived on about a week ago and I have one night out with it.

I have it coupled with a new DiscMount 4" head and my Orion 100ed.
This is a great combination - and with serve my future SV115 making for me - a dream combination.

The TSL5 is a very functional and solid pier. The legs are a nice walnut with two hand knobs for locking each of them down. I don't think there is even a noticable/meaningfull loss in stability when they are fully extended - which is how I used it.

It felt perfect with the legs fully extended as I had leg room tucking myself and observing chair inside the wide footprint of the tripod at times. That is a pretty wide footprint - something like 56"+ inches from leg to leg when fully extended - probably 8" wider than my SVP.

The legs attach at mid pier leaving 10 or 12 inches of vertical above the legs - with my setup the diagonal cleared the legs all the way around.

The lower leg braces are a new design - different that the latest SV website picture. Each of the three are about 2 3/4 wide(inside width), the length is about 9 inches, there is an upturned lip that is 7/8th tall.

I was able to put a big 2" EP laying on its side in each of the three brace sections - there was some extra room leftover. I might lay felt down in the channels to protect them and the EP.

The braces attach to the underside of the pier with a hand knob.

The height with the legs retracted is around 38" and allows the unit to be taken out the door. With the legs extended fully the top of the mounting plate is around 50" but the width/spread of the legs makes it hard to get out the door.

The TSL5 (with 5 lb DM-4) weighs around 33 lbs - alittle bit less than my SVP. However, because the weight is centered in the pier and is symetrical, I found it easier to carry than the SVP Gem with is counter weight hanging off on end. It is still heavy, but easier than the SVP.

The TSL5 is solid - raps to the legs or pier section settled in a quick 1 second or so. That is attributed to the TSL5.

I am breaking in the DM-4 - still adjusing it/learning it. I had the Azm setting alittle loose at the start, but once getting it tighter(but still smooth motionwise) raps to the diagonal to settled in about 1/2 second at 140x with a very small image motion and absolutely no movement when focusing.

I have more tweaking to do on the Alt axis, but so far it is working very well.

The balancing is a great feature. I have it balanced so that there is no scope movement when switching from the minimum scope config (Rigel finder, 9x50, diagonal, but no EP) to the maximum (Rigel finder, 9x50, diagonal with big Pan 35 EP ). That is a 25 ounce swing and it hold anywhere, including zenith.

Normally, I sky hop using the 9x50 finder, but I ended up getting the Sky Commander with pre-installed encoders on the DM-4. Two star configuring was fast- Polaris and Arcturus. Then on to M13 - pretty much right in the center.
I tried a few others and yes it works perfectly for when I don't want to build my skill for star-hopping.

So, I am rather statisfied with the excellent combination.

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Seattle, WA
100ED, SV80ED, SV115 on order
PST DS, WO66 white light
35Pan, 27Pan, 14XW, 10XW, 7XW, 5XW, 3.5XW