Canon EOS 400D

Well I took the plunge and bought a 400D from City Cameras on Dawson St. At €799 it was the best price from the local shops. I bought my CGE 1100 and my Dob locally and as long as the price difference isn't too great I think it makes sense to support local retailers. Fingers crossed for good skies and low or at least predictable periodic error

Chris, Welcome to the boards. I think you'll find that the combo you bought will deliver all you hoped and more., I moved up to a CGE mount from a CG5 a short while ago. There is no comparison. My mount is showing a peak to peak periodic error of just 6 arcseconds without using PEC. On a recent autoguided imaging sequence, out of 31 x 5 minute autoguided exposures, I not lose a single frame due to guiding. Even more impressive was a few nights before cloud obscured my field of view for about an hour. Once the cloud departed the guidestar was within 2arcseconds of its original position.

A question, have you come across an issue with the CGE where when you turn it on the handcontroller is blank. You then turn it off/on again and everything is fine? Just curious because mine does this as does another CGE user I know.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on with all of this.

Good luck.

No it's been all fine so far. Only "problem" I had was forgetting to adjust for summer time - doh! The manual leaves a lot to be desired though. New SCT users really need to dig through the bulletin boards to get the most from the scope.

I've been it purely for visual work until I could decide between DSLR and CCD so I haven't needed to worry about tracking but it's good to know that you aren't having problems.