I have been operating the 10Micron GM1000 HPS mount with my APM 6 inch refractor since beginning of November 2015. It is a superbly well engineered and extremely accurate mount. Building a sky model and polar aligning the mount are straightforward tasks and I achieved very accurate results with minimal effort on first attempt. I am very pleased to have retired the AZ-EQ6 GT which was driving me mad with mediocre tracking and undiagnosed driver/USB connection issues causing occasional loss of synchronisation with the ACP pointing model. The GM1000 is in a different class with a price tag to match but I am now able to just concentrate on imaging and the only limiting factor is sky quality.
Many users of this mount take advantage of its extreme accuracy to abandon guiding however I am currently using active optics guiding with a Starlight Xpress SXV-AO-LF unit. As tracking error will be minimal the premise is that it may be possible to correct for residual fluctuations due to atmospheric turbulence (seeing). I will be conducting experiments with and without AO guiding to see if I can gather any evidence to support this proposition.
