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I spend most of my time in short viewing sessions on my deck, and with having to get up for work 5 out of 7 days, the quicker I can set up and view, and then tear down the better.

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What, you only have to get up 5 out of 7 days for work? Must be nice, I want your job!! (plus 6 yr old twins seems to work on the rest of the time remaining on the time left outside of work)

Seriously, I am the same - with all the grandiose plans of travelling to dark skies when I bought the equipment, most of my use is relegated to the backyard, brighter targets, planets and double stars as my mag 4.5 skies see to that!! (at least AZ has a lot of "clear" nights). I do "force" the issue by booking trips to dark sky sights for multiple nights to make sure there is SOME quality time - for example I have 5 days at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in June... and at least once a month I make it out to the club star parties.

So my parameters for a grab and go mount are the same - I like setting up the GM8 some of the time for the tracking and finding, but I really dont mind manually tracking; it makes me feel like a purist and like I am really doing something other than mechanically changing the EPs like a robot!

One thing to add after my last post, I took the Gibraltar out last night on Saturn with the NP101 - I really gave the tripod and head a once over in the shop yesterday before I went out. I found that the bolt / handle that attaches the Telepod head to the tripod had an anamoly in it where it left some play and did not tighten down securely. The way it was set up, the threads were catching to where it felt like the star handle was tight, but was actually a full turn off... still have a minor beef as this older style of tightening is not conducive to folks with large hands trying to turn that sucker in such a small space!! I was able to use a padded wrench and it was doable though (one MORE thing for the astro tool bag to carry around!)

After fixing that, lo and behold, last night on higher powers and Saturn, I was getting satisfactory performance out of the mount / scope combo!! It was not PERFECT - there were still some vibrations on focus, but it was 100% better than the previous experiences. Dampening times on hard tube taps and tripod jolts were 2 secs or less, which is very good. I only had the legs retracted about 25%. Thus, my negative statements about the Gibraltar are retracted!!

I still would like to check out the WO - I do like the alt / az combos where the scope hangs off to the side, it seems like it gives more freedom on higher targets. I am looking forward to Tom T's assessment, and any others that use it - especially a comparison to the TV Gibraltar (which again is not so bad after fixing the problem mine had).

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