I've been playing with some astrophotography for the past 2 years but always struggling with two things. The limitation of short exposure times and the inability to find some objects in the night sky. I'd almost bought the forerunner of this mount but knew it would only solve one of my problems. The new GTi with the SynScan/GoTo functionality means I now have no excuse not to get out in the cold nights and take lots of pictures. The manual was ok but vague in some of the descriptions about polar alignment - I reached out of FLO and they quickly sent me their own notes on this which were much better. Sorted.Excellent service!

I have found this mount to be well made and solid I heard some reports about movement in the dec axis but I have NOT found this on my mount,the only negative thing I found is the well known issue with the finder scope cover being A bit flimsy.comes off to easily.
looks to track well and connect to the ASI Air easily.
Far better than the Explore Scientific pmc 100

Ordered Monday morning, arrived Tuesday afternoon, first light that evening! Thanks FLO.

Once again FLO perfomed brilliantly, especially since this was being sent to the EU.

This was ordered to be a secondary mount at home and also as a travel mount. The intention is for it to carry a ASI2600mc with either a Samyang 135mm or my Sharpstar 61 EDPH II @ 275mm. I was a little concerned about some of the reviews concerning dreadful DEC backlash but decided to give it a try anyway as it seemed to be fixable

The build quality is very good. Its a solid and heavy little mount. I received the new version with two weights instead of 1 which was addressing some of the earlier complaints about being unable to balance with the supplied single weight. As it turned out, my Samyang/2600 needs both weights anyway.

I simply cant believe, however, that Skywatcher went with the same rubbish polar-scope cover as on the original SA (which I have). Every review I've seen on all the older SA's complained about this. It really would not be rocket science to make a cover that would not fall off when my cat breaks wind within 5 meters of the unit. - I think I have lost mine already! The addition of internal illumination on the polar scope addresses another of the earlier issues. I sourced a right angle viewfinder for PA with my old SA and it works fine with the polar scope on this GTi also. However, I do my PA with Sharpcap now so thats no longer a problem. PA was very clean and simple with the improved Alt/Az screws.

Set up and connection to my PC was simple using EQMOD and APT. GOTO was excellent and accurate enough even before plate solving. The connection through the Synscan app to my phone also worked very well, though I'm not sure if I'll ever use it for the type of imaging I do.

On my last night out guiding was running around 0.9 - 1.2" total RMS but with some occasional excursions to 1.6" or so. So not earth shatteringly good but well within what I need for either of my two set ups. And I think that its certainly acceptable for a mount of this size, type and cost.

So, all in, I think this is a great piece of kit. It does what it needs to do simply, well and with the minimum of fuss and at a reasonable cost. Personally I'd not try to take it above 300mm focal length but that might just be me.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding so this is the first image I took with this set up. I think its OK

https://astrob.in/cjemk0/0/

Got the SA GTi as an upgrade to my SA 2i Pro. And boy what a difference it made. The GoTo functionality is well worth the upgrade. This has made astrophotography even more enjoyable as I do not always have to be stepping outside to manually find targets...

As for the service from FLO, it was top notch! Quick delivery turnaround meant I was able to get my hands on the GTi even sooner than I had anticipated...

I bought this to pair with my RedCat51 which always looked a bit puny on my EQ6R-Pro and so was never getting used. So this is perfect in that I can lift it out onto the drive, be polar aligned in 10 minutes or so and be imaging pretty quickly before bringing it all back in because of the inevitable clouds! Tracking is a bit above 1 arc-sec, but that is OK with my pixel scale at more than 2 arc-sec/pixel so stars look absolutely fine. Backlash in DEC is higher than on my other mounts, but that doesn't seem to be causing any problems so I haven't seen the need to try to start fiddling with the mechanics to improve things like I have with my other mounts. I haven't done this yet, but the intention is to be able to take this away from the local houses to get a better horizon to the south for shooting some of the lower objects for longer and it will be perfect for that once I've sorted out my Pi and StellarMate.

I ordered the full package which includes the tripod and extension pillar. FLO provided their usual rapid delivery service. My first impressions on unpacking was that the build quality was generally good but the fit of the polar scope covers was very poor, the lower one repeatedly falls off. Due to bad weather I have not been able to fully test this mounts capabilities. The goto function using the Synscan app installed on my mobile phone was tested and worked ok as did the Synscan hand controller I already owned for my EQ6-R mount. A break in the weather permitted a brief unguided imaging run using my Canon EOS600D and 50mm f1.8 lens to take 80 x 20" exposures of Cassiopeia. which turned out ok. I did have trouble getting this mount to work with the Ascom platform though. In the end I found that the only way I could get it to work was to connect the hand controller to the mount and the Laptop using Lynx cables and select PC Control after which it was possible to use a direct connection between the Laptop and the mount using a Lynx FTDI cable plugged into the hand controller port. For some reason I have not been able to get the USB2 port on the mount to work. A rare break in the clouds allowed me to test the Ascom set up by selecting a target (M33) with Stellarium. Pointing was reasonably accurate but the target was easily centred using plate solving software. Deteriorating weather conditions prevented further testing. I ordered this mount specifically for use with my CAT51 set up which includes an Altair AA 533C Pro Tec camera, filter draw, AA 32mm guide scope and GPCAM290M camera and ZWO EAF 5v. The mount seems to be perfectly capable of handling this arrangement. I have connected this mount to an external 12v supply and also powered it with 8xAA batteries that can be installed internally and both systems proved satisfactory. I just wish there would be a break in the weather so I could give this mount a thorough work out but my first impressions are that it is a very capable piece of kit for the money and I look forward to using it to its full potential.

Recently I upgrade my Star Adventurer from a 2i to a GTi and the difference is amazing.

The goto functionality alone works really well and saves so much time. The unit its self is well built (apart from the battery compartment which can be a pain at times) and the addition of a fairly flexible intervalometer is a nice touch too.

I unpacked the unit set it up and mounted my camera on it, after polar alignment (which is simple especially as this unit has the illuminating led is now inside the polar scope) and then performed and alignment, this is both very easy and pretty accurate (even a 1 star alignment works pretty well)

I am generally very happy with this product, I would recommend running it from a power supply rather than batteries though.

FLO have been very helpful in this process they are an outstanding supplier and in my opinion second to none.

I found out about FLO from another member on the learning Astrophotography FB group. They proved to be a professional and reliable vendor. I had been in a holding pattern for over 3 months for a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi mount in the USA with no end in sight. FLO had inventory and completed my order so quickly that I would never have guessed it was sent from overseas had I not known that it was.

This mount has been out of stock everywhere for a while now, but preordered with FLO and very happy at how quickly it was delivered after it came back in - thank you

I am in the middle of setting this up for first light tonight and so far my impressions are very positive:
- The mount itself is definitely small enough that you could put it in a backpack and travel with it (although you probably don't want to pack the counterweights)
- I read a bit online about how the counterweight was too heavy to balance a very light setup, to my surprise rather than a single 5lb counterweight this came with 1.5lb and a 3.5lb counterweights. Sky-Watcher must have realised this was an issue and fixed it
- I am unsure what it's called, but the mount came with a "printer" USB cable. I have tested this out by plugging it into an ASIAIR (pick EQMOD mount) and it was detected/does it's magic immediately. Super happy about this
- everything feels high quality and sturdy. The dials are all big and can see they would be easy to use even with gloves
- I had very low expectations for the tripod, but I'm actually quite happy with it. For a less than £100 tripod it's very sturdy and definitely going to be good enough for any load going on here.


a few "hmmm don't like that"'s:
- there is a really rubbish cap that fits over the polar scope. it connects in to where the battery packs go and while I have batteries in the mount I can't even clip the cap in properly. I will bodge some fix to this, but it's such a strange thing to do
- the tripod is sturdier than I expected, but the flip side is you're probably not going to be taking this tripod on a plane
- there is no spirit level on the mount, but I guess that's a very minor grumble
- I had a quick try to power the mount via an ASIAIR but couldn't get it to work. The manual says (a lot!!) that the preferred option is to use batteries, so I'm doing that for now and revisit this later.

Overall, what a great little mount for £600!