Snyta EQ6 German Equatorial Mount

I have owned this mount now for nearly two years and I thought it prudent to provide a review of its use.

The EQ6 is a German equatorial mount and the heaviest mount that Synta makes. It is designed to support a maximum payload of 40lbs. The mount breaks down into two main parts, that being the tripod and the mount itself. The head weighs just 17kg and comes standard with two counterweights weighing 5.4kgs each. It is easily moved around without being too heavy or awkward. The scope also comes with an illuminated polar scope which has both Southern and Northern hemisphere orientations for quick alignment. Setting circles are also incorporated into the mount.

The legs of the tripod seem appropriately constructed for the weights it will be carry. They come in chrome finish which can take a lot of wear and tear.

When I bought this mount it came with the skyscan 2.05a hand controller, which was not flash upgradeable. The newer mounts come with the V3 hand controller.

Use

Up until present I have used this mount to carry a variety of scopes. It has been used to carry a PST solar scope, ED80 refractor and C9.25 SCT. Each scope has been used at very high resolution and the mount has delivered smooth consistent tracking. When I am imaging Jupiter, Saturn or Mars at 10,000 + millimetres the tracking only needs small amounts of adjustment to maintain the disk of the planet in the viewing panel. The viewing panel is 640x480 pixels in size. This is largely due to small errors in polar alignment and periodic error.

Conducting polar alignment is a breeze. Although the mount comes with a polar scope, I have to say I have never once used it. I have heard that finding the stars in Octans is a little hard because the illumination is too bright, but cannot really comment further than I have. So instead of using the polar scope I employ the drift method for obtaining polar alignment.

When doing drift alignment, I found that using the azimuth control knobs to be very easy, they are neither stiff or too loose and allow me to get very good alignment on the meridian star. The altitude adjustment screws are not so easy. They are generally stiff and sometimes very difficult to move the mount. I really think that they could use a system much closer to the Losmandy mounts.

Moving the mount manually is also good. The locking clamps are simply great. They allow the right amount of leverage to be applied easily. And the same can be said of the locking clamp for the retractable counterweight shaft. Which I think is a truly novel idea. It is a pity most mounts do not have this. It just means that you are never going to leave it behind and ruin a night out.

Hand Controller

This is where I have had very bad results. As mentioned above this mount did come with skyscan 2.05a and now the mount comes with the V3 hand controller which is flash upgradeable. Neither of these units has ever worked consistently for me. Coming from a Meade Autostar background, has given me a frame of reference to determine that this system has a long way to travel before it is perfected. Of the many errors that I have found, there are two that I find really annoying. These are that the hand controller cannot point consistently or it auto slews all the time. The software is the real culprit and despite making many complaints to Skywatcher little if anything has been done to correct the problems that I highlighted. Simply correcting large movements in the auto slew and leaving a small one is not fixing the problem. To compound the issue the software fails to recognise that time zones can be broken down into half hour increments. I live in a zone of 9.5 hours and I cannot set this on the hand controller. This must be the primary cause of the pointing errors as the system relies on the time to correctly determine where it is on the earth. Despite my complaints about this, Skywatcher have almost seemed oblivious to users in half time zones. I find this to be arrogant on their behalf and it has resulted in me considering to replace the entire hand controller with the Argo Navis system.

Overall Assessment

This mount is a good mount, it provides solid performance and for the price it is the best in its class. However, the thing to bring it down is the hand controller. If the software is ever sorted out, this mount would be truly excellent.

by Paul Haese