Hi! Happy to see that someone besides me found this mount to use for this purpose (panning timelapse).
I just got one of these off Ebay and I have a question regarding tracking & cruising speed. Hopefully when you get back you could answer this:
The manual says that tracking is 1x, 4x, and 8x sidereal rate, and cruising is 32x, 64x, 800x sidereal rate. The tracking speed seems to be fine, and manual slewing seems to be right, but when I do cruising (GoTo mode), the speeds are faster. Specifically, I can't seem to get it to cruise at 32x, but only much faster.... I timed it and it did 360deg in about 5 minutes, making it somewhere in the vicinity of 288x sidereal rate. This is not documented in the manual, but I guess it could be the default? Can you confirm that this is so, or that there might be a problem with the unit?
On another note, if anyone else is interested in this mount and have any questions, please feel free to shoot them over. I just opened a Vimeo account to post some videos I'll be taking with this mount.
http://www.vimeo.com/1234880
Here's a test I did, panning at 8x sidereal rate (2deg/min). Since it was shot inside, the video is far from artistic, but you get an idea.