Excellent

Great piece of kit, works well

So I understand that products accompanied by relatively low costs, come with a caveat of potentially somewhat sketchy quality control. My first Skytee-2 was delivered missing a pin that allows the included weight to be locked in place and with one of the three M4 bolts used to secure the main saddle puck being stripped. Luckily and as usual FLO were amazing in getting this replaced for me and the second mount is perfect.

So onto the review.. It literally has zero vibration meaning its a joy to use for visual astronomy. The slo-mo controls work well and move the mount without creating any 'judder'. I have the mount setup with my 4.5kg Starfield ED102 on the main saddle, with my Nikon P1000 on the other end, mounted on a L bracket. I'm actually using the camera as a very expensive finder and for lunar photography and the scope for visual stuff. If seeing ever improved it would be an amazing setup. (good old UK skies)

One slight caveat, its relatively heavy, so potentially not ideal as a quick grab n go option. if you are looking for a light weight AZ option for grab n go stuff, I highly recommend the Skywatcher AZ4. That's purely a personal thing, but something to be aware of.

Having never seen one in the flesh, I was pleasantly surprised by the size and solidity of the Skytee 2, much bigger than anticipated. What mount though, absolutely rock solid and no quivering like a jelly that my poor old Celestron DX exhibited! Seems well put together and, after fiddling around and finding what level / knob does what I am finding its pleasure to use. I was going to later get the remote brands for the slow mo controls but I'm finding that I like the directness of the actual control knobs and they fall quite easily to hand. When ordering, I didn't look at the specs closely enough to see that it came with one counterweight and ordered the Sky watcher weights thinking I'd need them, oh well! I gave it 4 stars as my example came with some paint gouges in the top surface of the RH puck, now covered with the mounting bracket. Impeccable FLO service as usual.

I’m going to comment on two things.

First the SkyTee 2 mount has to be one of the best values in heavy duty telescope mounts. It’s rock solid. It allows you to mount two telescopes at the same time. The controls are smooth and I especially like that on one side you can mount your scope with the vixen dovetail underneath rather than sideways.

Second, FLO has become one of my favorite online stores for astronomy equipment, even though I live in the US. They often have stock when other stores don’t. They ship things promptly. Above all, the customer service is excellent as I found out when I had a problem with an item I had bought.

Tried the AZ5 manual mount first on a camera tripod. Didn’t like it much. Flimsy. Unstable. This SkyTee is vastly superior. It’s really solid. It also fits my 10 year old skywatcher tripod and has Takahashi 35mm m8 holes on a circular mounting plate! Ace!

There is some play in the horizontal rotation, but I’m sure it can eradicated.

Great manual mount!

Really pleased with this mount, yes it's just a basic no nonsense mount, I bought both tripod and mount kit, light enough to move around and handles my Explorer 150 PDs with ease.

I bought this to be more stable than my portamount and quicker to set up than my AzEq5. Both boxes ticked, I can even track the sun comfortably with an F11 4” refractor which was almost impossible on the portamount. Very stable on a Berlebach, the second saddle can be aligned to the first, wish I’d done this before. A pity the AzEq5 weights don’t fit (unless you remove the plastic collar insert which is fragile) as the SkyTee comes with one small counterweight but that’s not the fault of the mount. A second scope does the trick though.

Great service and advice from FLO. I deforked my old classic 10" Lx200 which was electronically 'dead' so was looking for a sturdy mount that could comfortably take the 12.8Kg mass. I also wanted something that was quick to set up and simple for star hopping. I was also hoping to keep costs to a minimum. This mount has proven to be ideal. Perfectly balanced with the supplied counter weight. The slow motion control is smooth. I upgraded to an ADM saddle and fitted an ADM bar to the Lx200 which is solid too. The movement is smooth so I guess previous issues with grease have been resolved. Setting up takes 3 minutes (I timed this!) so I'm really pleased. I even reused and adapted the old Lx200 tripod by purchasing an M10 size threaded rod and various nuts and washers. All in all, a very reasonably priced way to completely revitalise what was an unused dead 1990's Lx200 and renewed my interest in astronomy due to simplicity of use. Just want to add a Telrad now for simple star hopping. Highly recommended.

Ok so now mine is cleaned and re-greased I think it's a super bit of kit. Very utilitarian and easy to use. However it arrives with grease that is very, very sticky and quite frankly is almost unusable. Took me a few hours to strip and re-grease and now it brilliant.