Took a few days to get the money transferred (first from our US account to my German account, then from there to Baader). And then it took 2 weeks to ship the mount here (1 week for US customs).
But today, it finally arrived.
I unpacked everything. I read so much about the quality and the finish of Astro-Physics products that I expected only awesomeness. And I wasn't disappointed. The mount itself, the control box, the counterweight bar... everything felt robust and very high quality. The assembly was great - the pieces are all so well made and exact. A few times, I used the wrong size screw or such. And each time, I noticed it immediately: if it doesn't easily and smoothly fits, it's probably the wrong piece. Finally, I had the mount assembled on the Eagle Pier. I attached the impressive control box to the pier. And then connected the cables. For now, I'll route all the cables on the outside. But I really want to move them inside the mount (and with that move all the control boxes from the OTA to the pier). I also installed the polar scope.
Finally, I connected the scope to my laptop. Downloaded and configured the ASCOM driver from the Astro-Physics site. I tried both, the native and the ASCOM driver in TheSkyX - they both seem to work. Asked on the ap-gto mailing list which one to use.
... and then it was WAY past midnight and it got foggy. Time to go to bed.
Things to try out tomorrow night:
- Get outside, rough polar alignment (turn mount on top of eagle pier such that it points to north when I align the eagile legs with our pavement - that will make setup faster!)
- Polar alignment through polar scope
- Polar alignment with Polaris alignment
- Sync
- Try some slews
- Check orthogonality (cone error)
- Use with TheSkyX
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