A few months ago, I had acquired a pre-owned iOptron CEM26, the version with polar scope, LiteRoc tripod and storage case. The intention of the purchase was to have a mobile mount for visual astronomy and astrophotography, so that I can go to telescope meetings and outreach activities with my smaller telescopes.
After the mount head had crashed into the base once during an indoor test (I was able to switch it off immediately), I gained more insight about the difference between "zero position" and "parking position". Lession learned was to set zero position always after starting up the mount.
The day before yesterday, I set up the mount in my backyard, loaded with my FS-60CB for double star observations and a quick look at Saturn and Jupiter. I only used the handbox for slewing to the targets. The good thing is the included Hipparcos star database, therefore, it was easy to enter any of the double stars with a little preparation work. What a performer the combination of mount and telescope was! Luckily, I had bought a 2 kg counterweight because I had already expected that the 4.5 kg one which had been supplied with the mount, would have been too heavy for the lightweight 2.4" apochromat. I was right, the 2 kg counterweight is a perfect match, even when using heavy eyepieces.
2-star alignment worked well enough, even though a 3-star alignment would have been even better for considering cone error. GoTo was fast and quiet, centering corrections did not reveal any backlash. The sturdiness of the mount/tripod combination was a surprise, too. No vibrations while focusing.
Seems I have to apologize for not having any issues with the CEM26. I did not even experience the Z-axis imbalance sensitivity which is reported frequently.
Of course, some of these modern mounts are more sophisticated and less robust compared to the mounts we had 30 or 40 years ago. Considering this, experience of the owner with mounts in general will pay off in my opinion. Now, I look forward to astrophotography testing.
Juergen
