Andrey-
I'm definitely curious about your pano head. Please do post some more info. I'd like to experiment with panos, but the $700+ for a RSS pano ultimate is just a little out of reach right now.
Here is my "hand made" pano head:
It is made of an old flash bracket, several bolts and construction brackets and screws on a tripod as an ordinary head. Well, it lacks the precision and mobility of an original head, but if you build it for a specific camera — it works great. Have been making 360x180 interior stuff with it, having closest objects just a few ft from the camera and everything was aligned perfectly! For single row panos I use an ordinary Manfrotto 804RC2.
Regarding stitching — I am using PTGui with Smartblend plug-it for warping. I have not used Autopano, but suppose it should be quite similar.
PTGui is a unique software. Have been shooting a class at school, about 10 frames with 350D (long time ago)); people could not stand still)) Certainly everybody were moving, but... PTGui had stitched the pano perfectly on AUTO MODE! I don't know how this was possible, but I could not repeat that in PS afterwords)) Here the pano: