Telescope Reviews: 2 Concerns About Atlas

I'll pipe up on this QC issue. Over the last 8 months I've purchased 2 of the 'chinese mounts'. In january we bought the Skywatcher EQ6-Pro, and this week we grabbed the HEQ5-Pro to finish the mounts for 'his and hers' astrophotography setups. Our first mount was the Skywatcher EQ3 with synscan, purchased about 18 months ago.

In all fairness, the EQ3 we purchased came from a telescope store in Vancouver, and, it was a prototype eval unit for the EQ3 synscan package, a pre-release sample. We had some issues with it over time, but at the beginning of July we bumped into the skywatcher technical folks at a star party. I asked them questions about it, they immediately came over and looked at the system in detail. They concluded, the store had mixed up a couple components between the EQ3 demo and the EQ5 demo, and fixed it on the spot (after midnite, under an overcast sky on the scope field at a star party). Color me impressed. Since then, the EQ3 goto system has been basically flawless, and the mount itself lives up to expectations, which are not nearly as high as those for the EQ6. My biggest complaint with the EQ3 is backlash, it's got more than we want, and, it's not up to carrying the load we eventually want to place on the second mount, hence a recent upgrade.

When we bought the EQ6-Pro in January, it arrived, I assembled it, and the experience went along this line.

- Polar scope was perfectly aligned with the axis out of the box.
- Everything was present and accounted for in the box.
- Mount fired up, just worked, and has been trouble free ever since.
- I have measured this mount, PE is 11 arcseconds peak to peak. That's far superior to the published tolerances for the mount, and kind of hard to argue with considering its a $1500 mount.
- Using the ZS80 (585mm focal length) and the Nikon D-50, the EQ6 can bang off 2 minute exposures all night, without guiding, and we get 90% or higher ratio of keepers. Ratio is slightly lower on 3 minute exposures.
- With an autoguider running, I can bang off 6 minute exposures non stop with this setup using a 1540mm fl scope, and the keeper ratio runs awful close to 100%.

We got the HEQ5-Pro earlier this week. It's only been out under a night sky once, for an hour and a half last nite. Initial impressions so far, it's lived up to the high expectations set by our EQ6-Pro. Like the earlier one, this one came out of the box with the polar scope perfectly aligned. First setup took less than 5 minutes. It's _slightly_ louder than the EQ6, but not enough to be really noticeable. One of the hand paddle keys is a bit sticky, but, I'm confident that'll wear in after a couple of nites out, and no longer be an issue. If it doesn't, the dealer we bought it from will be at the star party we are attending next weekend, and has already offered to swap it out for a replacement if the problem continues. I haven't had a chance yet to do any PE measurements on it, but may get the chance this weekend, if we get any clear sky.

I cant disagree with 'choose your dealer' to make sure you are working with somebody that'll go good on any problematic equipment, but, I dont think the QC on those mounts is as bad as many try imply here on CN. At least our experience with the Skywatcher -Pro series suggests the QC is pretty good on those. Your mileage may vary.

Then again, I guess it's also possible, there is actually a difference between the QC on the white paint models vs that on the black paint models.