I was really excited when the UPS guy finally showed up. I Hauled the mount to the garage and began unpacking and assembling. I wasn't until I laid hands on it that I realized how heavy it really was. My last mount was a very flimsy DS2000. This LXD is the real deal.

I hooked up the power, control box and hit the power ... Grind, gnash ... horrible, frightening sounds. The mount moved maybe 1 inch before stripping gears. I began looking for the cause.

The bolts that hold the motor drives to the mount were loose. A bolt check reveals the almost every screw is loose. Some are really hard to get to and require special tools. How many people have a 0.035" Allen wrench in the tool box?

The gears that drive the mount will not stay tight on the motor shaft. They should have used thread locker in the factory. You will need to address this when you get the mount. Either add a bit of aluminum to provide a crush lock or put some locktight on the _TINY_ grub screw before you even think of taking this out.

Once I addressed the parts falling off the mount works very well. There is close to no slack in the drive and it's weight keeps it from moving around when bumped.

The documentation is too brief. For example there is no directions on how to use the polar scope. The manual is simply a part identification. I could have really used some help with that setting circle.

With a little help from various websites I was able to figure it out and now I use the Kocab clock method. Rather than fiddling with the setting circles you can use the location of Kocab, a star in the Little Dipper.

After what seemed like too much struggle for an expensive mount I'm finally able to go out in the field and trust it to work and not loose parts. I am happy with the performance of the mount but very disappointed in Meade's QA. A little torque here and there and a bit of locktight would have saved me a lot of curse words and a couple of wasted nights observing.

I would recommend it to a friend, but only if I knew they were mechanically inclined. If you are afraid to turn some screws this is not the mount for you.