iOptron HAE69C EC Mount Review - Part 2

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We need more of these thorough reviews. Great job!

Great review! My HAE69CEC Dec backlash measured at 235 +/-44 ms in PHD2. I'm keeping good polar alignment by partially tightening, re-adjusting, and repeating until tight. I think the main issue with the base is that it allows conversion to Alt-Az mode, so it needs to be somewhat mechanically sloppy. I agree, I'd like to see a version with the CEM70 base. I personally switched from the CEM70 because I'm partially disabled and getting older, so it's getting harder to handle the counterweights.

Good review. Few points: 1. I have the EXACT same problem you mentioned where the RA drifts if I move the DEC north and south. It is very reproducible. I have only noticed it when I was doing Planetary imaging. I sent a video of this 6 months ago to iOptron. They were very slow to respond. Said that they are not sure what is the cause and never heard back from them. It is absolutely laughable that they pretend they did not hear of this issue before. Whether that issue affects astrophotography I have no idea. Your explanation seems reasonable though. 2. The issue with the Azimuth polar alignment is that the mechanism also anchors the mount to the tripier plate. So when you losen the scews, it also loosens the mount. If the mount is extremely unbalanced, then it will slightly tilt , which in turn will throw your polar alignment off when your tighten the Azimuth screws. I have always had them mostly tight when I get close, just enough to be able to adjust the azimuth, and then tighten full. I have had no issues with the Altitude levers. They have been very precise and it keeps its PA even after being tightened. I leave the scope and mount out in my backyard for weeks and sometimes months and it holds the polar alignment very very well. 3. I have used the HAE69ec with the ASIair exclusively but plan on using a fully fledged PHD2 soon. It has been guiding better than your results even close to celestial equator. That being said it is definitely seeing dependent. On average it spends most of its time around 0.4". Bad seeing will get it closer to 0.5-0.6". Good seeig or farther frome the celestial equator and it will easily get to 0.3". 4. I have to say I am very addicted to Harmonic mounts at this point. No balancing and light weight is hard to beat. 5. I believe I pointed out the fact that the mount has high precision encoders not absolute encoders on CN. Glad you cleared that up. 6. iOptron's support is terrible in my experience. Any time there is a question about guiding, they send you a PDF about how to tighten the belts. They won't even respond to my emails at this point even though I may have emailed them twice in 6 months. They really don't care. Tightening the belts involves removing the front plate with multiple wires attached to the board that are very difficult to remove without potential serious damage to the board. 7. By the way, did you ever figure out why on earth they put a "bubble level" under the mount head, where it is impossible to look at that bubble? Personally, I am keeping the mount and getting decent results, but I will never buy an iOptron mount again. Hopefully we get more high payload capacity harmonic mounts from other manufacturers. Looking to skywatcher for the 150i.

Impressive mount review, keep up the good work! 👌

Comprehensive review, well done!

Fairly new to the hobby. I have a cem26, and honestly I just tighten it down enough to where it’s firm but can still adjust for PA. Then I leave it be. I think the weight on it is enough to where I haven’t had any movement, also due to the thread pitch of the adjusters, it would take excessive force to move it. I’m usually around .5-.7 total RMS. But that’s just me…. I’m curious as it might be a buffer when slewing while tracking, maybe take a dry erase marker and mark it before, then slew around, when it drifts back, see if it returns to the original spot if that makes sense. Great video! I honestly love encoders, use them a lot at work. They basically just keep the servo motor honest. Hope some of my info helped you or others reading.

Thank you for your excellent reviews! My friend, who has the same mount, encountered guiding issues and poor results in PHD2 until he changed the settings from LowPass2 to Hess and Stree, and increased the guiding exposure to 4 seconds, despite PHD2 recommending LowPass2. With these adjustments, he achieved a total RMS of approximately 0.38 using the EdgeHD 11" under poor seeing conditions in a Bortle 9 sky, without a counterweight. I received my exact mount about a week ago, but I haven't had the chance to test it yet since it arrived just a day before my vacation to Europe. I plan to try it out next Friday with my EdgeHD 9.25 scope and will post an update then. Clear night!

It would be great if you could post the test methodologies you used (assuming your collaborators agree). There are enough of us out here with the mount that it would be useful for us to have a common benchmark to compare and build a broader base profile of the mounts performance. Thank you for such a thorough review.

I own a HEM27EC which is a hybrid harmonic mount and I am able to image unguided for upto 60 seconds before I notice star trails. But this is only after perfect polar alignment and a super sturdy tripod. I just use the default PHD2 settings and use guiding assistant to find optimum settings. I usually allow the encoder to most of the work by using 4 to 5 second PHD2 exposures. From what I understand, harmonic mounts with an encoder cannot compete with the like of a CEM70 because of the high PEC. Actually the encoder makes a harmonic mount work like a regular mount without an encoder. Either way the encoder helps with long focal lengths over 1000mm. Thanks for the video!

Sry detailed and well thought and presented review. I love strain test mounts because of their portability as I am disabled and a big heavy mount is almost impossible for me to carry constantly, but of coarse imaging demands that the mount aligns properly to the NCP and keeps that alignment. For the price I think you are right, it has great potential but still needs some work. Thank you for your video. Best regards Luis from NY

Thx for this review. I was on the fence to get this HAE69. I do own the HAE43EC which works fine, but I noticed the RA drift a couple of times when observing the moon. I noticed the tracking was stopped for a moment. After small manual adjustments. I did sell my CEM70 recently…. Might not be the best decision I made recently. I have had many iOptron mounts (7) and the PA is a PITA. But is doable.. what I do know is that with strainwave mounts you get the best results when the ota is well balanced. A light tail heavy unbalance works great. I use a TEC140ED of 15kg on the HAE43 and it guides good. I bought the 43 more for grap and go…. I will wait until there is serious CEM70 specs like strainwave. Keep up these reviews.

Love your videos and great review. I own a CEM70EC and disagree with your statement about the CEM70 not having an issue with PA . If you loosen the Alt screws to acquire PA then tighten them again once you have PA then PA shifts a considerable amount. For this reason I tend to force PA in Alt against a tightened clamp screw which is no good for the brass half gear on the Alt adjustment. Also, there's a new version of Commander 9.13 - I don't think it improve your issues but may be worth a shot.

I have an HAE-29EC and haven't experienced the issues you have identified. I have been able to get it polar aligned to within 1' pretty easily, though I have to make sure the locks are very tight. I'm using the carbon fibre tripod rather than pier though. I've been able to image unguided for several minutes with perfect star shapes but that's with a 250mm focal length redcat51. I've not noticed either significant backlash or the cross contamination issues in slewing the axes but will watch out for them. Thanks for the thorough review!

ありがとうございます！

Thanks for the second part of the review. I'm on the fence for HAE69BEC, and this review makes the fence a little taller. lol I've seen reports on CN of people, who acknowledged the PA issue, being able to zero out the PA the same way you did, that is by pre-tensioning the ALT and AZ knobs. I guess it's finicky but it can be done once the procedure is developed. UPD: I agree with your earlier comment that we shouldn't have to do this exercise with a $6k mount.

thanks!

Thanks!

Bedankt

Julien, first of all, Awesome review!!! I wish more reviewers out there took the quantifiable results approach that you use. Secondly I apologize for the late reply, I originally passed on this video since I neither have the mount nor was I interested in purchasing it but you caught me with the Japan video and I just kept watching this next! Despite not necessarily being interested in buying one I did very much enjoy seeing the methods you used to quantify your results. One thing I am interested in is, did you have to set up a pointing model? I have a Paramount MyT which has a similar relative encoder system to the HAE69C and I also recently received an A-P Mach2GTO and both of those mounts don't really do their best work until the pointing model is complete and in place. Also in the case of the Paramount MyT you really need to to a PEC model as well. Next observation is that with my ZWO AM5 I found that I got my best results like you did with this mount. By polar aligning with slight RA and Dec drift and setting an appropriately low MinMo and aggressiveness I found that I could pretty much always be correcting in just one direction and avoid the horrendous backlash that my AM5 has. Keep going with the great videos!