The most amazing and fun GOTO mount I have tested in 5 years. At first when I read the manual on the Milestone Alt/Az mount I was about to test I was a bit skeptical when I got to the bit about alignment, and read that it required only 1 bright object out of a choice of 15 bright objects including planets.... Planets???

How can it possibly align accurately on anything less than 2 objects and preferably stars. So reading no more I took the mount out and assembled it and after arming it with the shops trusty 102mm f/6.5 refractor and a 25mm Plossl I powered it up. After warning me about not looking into the sun I set up the hand controller and entered my data as prompted Date, Time, Site, the usual as with all GOTO systems and stored them in its data bank.

I then chose alignment and was given a choice of:

1. Bright Objects or
2. Advanced User

So I went for 1. Bright Objects and the first option was Venus that was setting in the West. No Way I thought is this going to work, but after choosing it I was asked to slew the telescope and center Venus using the arrow keys on the controller so that's what I did and pressed the OK key and was rewarded with Alignment Successful on the controller display.

I was dumbstruck!

All I had done was level the mount, I was not asked to start from a park position nothing, I did not point the tube to the Zenith or align the mount in any direction, I just turned the mount on, picked 1 bright object, not even a star and its telling me Alignment Successful.

I had reservations, so I set it the task of finding Alpha Centauri and off it went, directly and with a sense of purpose and without drama. Speechless would best describe my initial reaction, so I decided to send it back to Venus as it was still early and it was not dark, after it slewed back to Venus I decided to go have coffee and check out the tracking. 30 minutes later and I went out and there was Venus still almost in the center of my F.O.V.

I then proceeded to go on a grand tour starting with Jupiter, Uranus, NGC 253..... some time later about 3 hours in fact I was struck by the realization that the mount had not put a foot wrong the entire evening, I am truly impressed. I then turned off and manually pointed the telescope to Jupiter, turned it back went through the alignment process and aligned on Jupiter, Alignment Successful and we were back in business. This mount is the most straight forward and easy mount to set up, it is also very easy to use. With its 8kg payload it will handle a 150mm Maksutov or 102mm refractor with ease, it is rock steady with my 102mm f/6.5.