Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI Mount Head Kit with Counterweight and CW bar - Full GoTo EQ Tracking Mount for Portable and Lightweight Astrophotography

This is my first Star Tracker equatorial mount. And was a much awaited and anticipated purchase. I did not expect such a reputed company to outsource production to CHINA. The Battery cover is made of cheap plastic and very poorly designed. My tracker did not turn on while using 8 AA batteries, after a lot of trials I discovered that it would turn on if I pressed down on the battery cover, in spite of the screw being fully tightened. There seems to be some loose contact, in the battery compartment. I could only make it work after tying down the battery compartment using a bungee cord strap. The battery compartment cover is held down by three small plastic pegs on one end and the screw on the other end. On close inspection one of the plastic pegs was broken. I felt it wasn’t worth paying for the shipping, to send this back to the company for a replacement. The design could be improved if the battery compartment cover is held down using 2 screws at both ends, instead of the small plastic pegs. Looks like the bungee chord strap is going to be part of my rig. While using fully charged 8AA Panasonic Eneloop batteries, the red light kept flashing, probably indicating Low voltage. (Each Eneloop Battery is only 1.2V giving a total voltage of only 9.6V.) But Despite this, Once it turned on everything seemed to work well as expected, waiting for clear skies to test it out in the field. The SynScan Pro App works perfectly and had no problems connecting my Android phone via WIFI

Works well, though the SynScan app can be problematic upon occasion. When it is working, my goto’s were very good. I do astrophotography and use this with a guide scope/camera, through EQMOD and that works well. Some nights my total error is about 1.2-1.7 which isn’t great if you have a camera with very small pixel pitch. For mine not an issue. Other nights I can get about 0.6-0.8 total error. Goto’s with Stellarium and EQMOD work very nicely. And with no guide, good polar alignment I could get up to 2 min subs with a 200mm lens.

El Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTI es un muy buen producto para astrofotografía básica. Puede soportar muy bien el peso de un Celestron C5 spotting scope junto con una cámara Nikon D3100 y su anillo T adaptador (T-Ring Adapter). Logre tomar una muy buena imagen de la Nebulosa de Orión con seguimiento y tiempo de exposición de 30 segundos (27 imágenes apiladas). En las pruebas que realice es posible tomar fotografías de hasta 1 minuto de exposición, sin guiado; obteniéndose estrellas aceptablemente puntuales. Es importante aclarar que la versión que compre venia SIN TRIPODE tal y como lo mencionaba la descripción en su momento (revisar antes de comprar). Al respecto del tripode es importante que este sea robusto y que pueda soportar el peso del Sky-Watcher, Telescopio y aditamentos juntos; adicional a esto hay que tomar en cuenta que el SkyWatcher viene con rosca para TORNILLO DE SUJECION DE 3/8 - 16. Algunos trípodes utilizan tornillos de sujeción diferentes por lo que es muy importante verificar que tornillo de sujeción tiene el trípode que pretendes usar con el skywatcher. Si no fuera compatible, será necesario que adquieras un adaptador para la rosca de tu trípode. La función Go-To es funcional mas no muy precisa, pero no tendrás problemas para encuadrar tu objetivo de forma manual ya que no se desvía demasiado. En general estoy satisfecho con el producto.

Works very well. I quickly out grew the weight limit on it though. It now is a secondary mount for smaller rig.

Vale la pena si sabes de estas cosas. Sobre todo fácil de llevar y armar.

The Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTi has greatly simplified my astrophotography setup and made the hobby more enjoyable. I am currently using it for both planetary and deep sky, and with proper polar alignment I can do 60 second subs with no guiding without issue. For a beginner astrophotographer this is the way to go. With the app, you can do polar alignment and a 1-star alignment in around 5 minutes, which is great for nights where you may be under a time crunch due to weather.