German Equatorial Saddle AVALON LINEAR Stargo WIFI

German Equatorial Saddle AVALON LINEAR Stargo WIFI

Linear Fast Reverse

The Linear Fast Reverse system is an innovative mount designed for astrophotography and manufactured in Italy by Dal Sasso, a company with more than 30 years of experience in the manufacture of high-precision mechanical parts.

Under the AVALON INSTRUMENTS brand, this AVALON LINEAR mount is positioned in the range of medium size mounts with a load capacity of around 20-25Kg for both visual observation and astrophotography.

The projectFast Reverse Linerwas born from the fusion between the passion for astronomy and mechanics, taking advantage of more than 20 years of testing experience, dozens of star parties and spending countless hours under the starry skies, with all kinds of instrumentation. Aware of the typical problems of the mounts in terms of design and mechanics, the mount Avalon Linear has been designed to overcome all these technical problems. Let us now go into more specific details of the mount, which in turn we believe are what make it so innovative, and that is that the most important decision in the LINEAR mount was to replace the crowns and bisenfines by another transmission system based on pulleys and toothed belts, both for Declination and for Straight Ascension.

Pulleys and timing belts: zero backlash!

The choice of the toothed belt and pulley system has led to several advantages: a really stable and backlash-free movement (no backlash) and no sudden peaks, a really essential factor for long guided exposures and during visual observations at high magnifications. These specifications are of particular relevance for the declination axis motor, which can now quickly reverse without interruptions or jumps to regain backlash: hence the name of the FAST REVERSE mount.

The timing belts used, for example, in the AVALON LINEAR have the structure made of a special material with steel strands to avoid any kind of deformation, elongation and stress, much better than the ones used in the timing belts of car engines (usually made of rubber with nylon strands). Considering that car timing belts offer a service life of about 100.000Km, we believe that the belts used in AVALON LINEAR saddles can have an extremely long life cycle!

It is important to note that a crown-bisenfine system has only a single tangent point of contact, so that errors in either the crown or the bisenfine will soon become noticeable resulting in tracking errors. On the other hand, the timing belt system with pulley, there is no direct contact between the pulley and the motion is transmitted by the belt engaging 50% to 90% of the perimeter surface. Consequently, any error eventually present is attenuated in the weighted average of all teeth, thus reducing the tracking error.

These features allow the AVALON LINEAR mount to achieve guided exposures of up to 20 or 30 minutes with point stars even with optical systems of 2000 or 3000mm focal length.

No friction, no deterioration!

Since there is no friction between the two drive struts, deterioration is non-existent. In fact, all sheaves and shafts rotate on roller bearings, 13 for the AR shaft and 13 for the Declination shaft so friction is reduced to practically zero.

The absence of significant backlash in the AVALON LINEAR mount makes initial calibration of the guiding CCD quick and easy.

No lubrication, no maintenance!

Since there are no crowns, there is no need to periodically lubricate the internal components and therefore maintenance is extremely reduced and limited to external cleaning.

Remarkable conclusions

THE AVALON LINEAR MOUNT HAS BEEN SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR NOMADIC ASTROPHOTOGRAPHERS AND HAS SOME PECULIAR FEATURES:

• Excellent performance in guided photography, even at very long focal lengths up to 3,000mm.
• Simple designYoriginal
• Truly protableAnd lightweight, with a useful handle and a weight of only 12.5 kg, excluding the counterweight bar
• Load capacity of up to 20Kg in photography (more advisable 15/18kg)
• High quality manufacturing, all parts designed to withstand long use, made of anodized aluminum and stainless steel and directly milled from single blocks thanks to machines CNC 5-axis and high precision.
• Reliable and high performance.
• Easy to use,In the two mechanical solutions and for those tasks where pointing is of interest. For this issue, in fact, Skywatchr's SYNSCAN has been adapted.
• Chinese frames aside, the AVALON LINEAR is the most economical frame among models with the same load capacity worldwide.
• Easily adaptable to the most important commercial tripods on the market such as the BAADER AHT, the SkyWatcher and many others.

In summary, the AVALON LINEAR FAST REVERSE mount is ideal for those nomadic astrophotographers looking to be able to make long deep sky exposures, even with slow equipment of long focal lengths, without sacrificing the high quality, lightness and reliability of the equipment.

German Equatorial Saddle AVALON LINEAR Stargo WIFI