Price: £229.00
Weight: 5.5kg
Supplier: The Widescreen Centre
Telephone: 020 7935 2580
Website: www.widescreen-centre.co.uk
The VersaGo is a sturdy mount that comes with an aluminium tripod.
Don’t be fooled if the tripod seems a little lightweight for the purpose: in practice we found the VersaGo stable and fully capable of handling our test refractors, as well as being easy to assemble and extremely portable.
It is designed for one telescope up to at least 6.8kg (15lb).
However, we found that the VersaGo could easily accommodate the 10kg (22lb) 5-inch refractor without any wobbles.
Even with the heaviest scope attached, any vibrations dampened down fairly quickly.
The mount is well designed and allows a telescope to point up to the zenith without touching the tripod as long as you position the legs correctly.
Movement in both axes was smooth, partly because of the Teflon bearings and partly because of the large aluminium axis tensioning knobs, which give good control over how tight you clamp the axes.
This smooth motion allowed us to keep our selected objects in the field of view, easily handling the apparent motion of the sky.
On the downside, the tightening knobs on the dovetail clamp were on the underside of the vertically arranged assembly.
They would be much easier to get to if they were on the upper side on the clamp.
We also found the panning shaft, which you hold to move the mounted telescope around, was loose, even when seemingly fully tightened.
However, these are minor quibbles for a mount that certainly does its job capably.
