Sky Watcher Sky-Watcher SolarQuest Tracking Mount - Safe Solar Specific Alt-Az Mount (S21170)

I have been looking for an affordable mount for my Coronado PST for some time and this did the trick. It is solid and very well built, standing up nicely even in south Texas wind. The Solarquest tracker gave me a bit of trouble when the power switch didn't work as advertised. In order to get it to turn off, I had to remove the power source. Sky Watcher service was very fast to respond and said return it for a refund or replacement but I ran into a brick wall with the Amazon robot that didn't quite understand what "replacement" meant. No problem since I intended to use it with an external power source anyway. Since then I've paired it with an inexpensive SV105 camera so I can watch the sun with my laptop instead of standing on my head to peer into the eyepiece. The mount does an amazing job of quickly acquiring the sun and tracking is spot on after that.

Fantastic mount for solar work. Turn it on and it finds the sun and locks onto it for all day viewing. Highly recommended and worth every cent.

While instruction manual is great for setup, there is no info about troubleshooting what the flashing/steady LEDs lights mean whatsoever. So there are 2 LEDs on the head (Power: Red LED and Mount Status: Green LED). The moment I turned the power of the mount on and waited, the tracker was not tracking the Sun. The Sun was no where in the FOV. So I turned it off by holding the power button for a couple seconds to give a second go. The red light starts flashing. No matter what I did, this thing will not turn on after this. I remove the batteries and start again. I pushed the power button, this time it turned on but still not bringing the Sun into the FOV. Did factory reset as manual instructed and now I have multiple LEDs flashing. Sometimes it is just a steady red light, sometimes the red light alone is flashing, sometimes it's the green light flashing with a steady red light, sometimes both lights are steady, sometimes green light is steady and red light is flashing, and sometimes both lights are not turned on but yet I am still able use the control knob to manually move the telescope. All these lights did nothing to slew the telescope despite waiting patiently. Did online search and found nothing. Surely these flashing/steady lights mean some kind of error code. Online chats gave no clear indication either about the lights. In the end I gave up and just used a cheap pinhole projection solar finder to bring the Sun into view. This is an expensive tripod and they can't put some basic error info on the manual??? If this experience persist, I'm returning this item.

It worked great the first time I used it. It probably took more than the advertised two minutes to get a GPS fix. After that, it aimed my scope at the sun and kept it there as long as I wanted to look. This will be going to eclipses along with my Day Star scope.The supplied tripod is good enough. Nice tripods are expensive! Sky Watcher did a good job of making an affordable product that works well enough. I already owned a sturdy tripod. I take it on trips because it can be used for photograph, astronomy, and other hobby uses.(The Day Star scope is highly recommended. The cheapest one shows flames reaching into space at the outer edge of the sun. Some texture shows on the surface of the sun, but not as much as you can see in photos taken on larger scopes.)

I'm using this with a Lunt 60 Ha scope and it handles it very well. It finds the sun quickly and tracks very well. The tripod is sturdier than it appears. Excellent rig for grab and go, also works for solar astrophotography. Running this on the 8 AA batteries has been working just fine, at the moment I don't see a need for the 12V hardwired power supply.It is a little expensive but it if you catch it on sale, like I did, its worth it simply because I now use my solar scope more because it so easy to set up and use.I mentioned in the title about an important detail, just don't interrupt it once its been turned on, let it finish. Do not turn it off until it either finds the sun or errors out because it can't. If you do, It will appear not to turn back on, you will need to do the factory reset process (slide disk to the to the lower right corner, then press the power). This drove me nuts and I almost sent it back until I figured it out.

It is very easy to use. After powering it up, wait for two or three minutes until GPS acquired signal, it will turn the scope to where the sun locate. Use the keypad on the mount to move sun into the field of view. That’s it. The mount will track the sun automatically. It is that simple and only take around 5 minutes to get it done.

The media could not be loaded. Set it up, adjust the legs so it's level, attach my Lunt 60THa and push the button. Nothing could be simpler. Yes - it's a one-trick pony, and a pricey one..... BUT .... no one else does that trick so quickly and easily. The ultimate in portable and quick solar observing. Video will come soon (when the clouds permit)

Very disappointedItem stopped working after a year