Orion Sirius EQ-G Arrives

Picked up my Sirius mount today from High Point Scientific and set it up in the kitchen to get a feel for how it works. Despite being my first-ever German equatorial mount, the assembly was very intuitive and it all went together fairly smoothly.

One small issue so far - the polar alignment scope looks through a hole in the dec shaft, and the two are supposed to line up when the dec is set to 90 deg, according to the manual. I have to turn the dec axis 35 deg counter-clockwise before I can see through the hole. I've emailed HPS about this, waiting to hear what they have to say. I really hope I don't have to send this thing back.

I tossed the TV85 on and balanced it easily. Haven't powered it up yet since I need to dig up a 12VDC 2A supply from the shack. She's a pretty thing, tho' the TV85 looks a bit wee on it. I won't be trying the mount out for real anytime soon - rain is forecast all weekend, naturally.

Now I'm just waiting for the Antares 5" to show up; got an email from the seller, it was sent on Tuesday; been tracking it online but UPS hasn't given me much info other than that it departed Redmond, WA on July 26...