Twinstar announced yesterday the launch of a new friction drive mount, similar to the FG-80, but smaller and with a 45kg payload.
Details and images are in this CloudyNights post and on their Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DV_PVVKCqZy/
The FG-80 is well know for the excellent tracking/guiding performance. Plus, this one have 3 versions, one of them (ultra) with a 24 bits encoder.
Any thoughts on this mount?
This looks great, sits somewhere between an EQ6 class mount and the larger observatory class mounts like mesu, trident and their own FG80, not a whole load of competition there.
At 2550euro plus vat I could certainly see myself moving up to this from my AZEQ6 in the next couple of years
I can also see myself changing from my current mount (Starlab DM02 - an eq mount made in Brazil, with payload of 35kg that gives me about 0.6” guiding RMS) into this. Specially if the reviews from the first users show an guiding error of 0.4” or less like FG-80, since I image at 2000mm and image scale of 0.39”/pixel.
The only problem will be the brazillian import taxes (about 100% over the full price + shipping).