Background

Only once was I able to do a successful south polar alignment out of perhaps 50 or so attempts. Each time I tried to do a 3 star alignment, all would go well until i got the message “alignment failed”. Very frustrating. After leaving it in the cupboard for several years as punishment I decided to mount it on an HEQ5 mount. Another problem that I had with the unit was locking the clutches. They would still slip even though I had tightened up the locking nuts as tight as I dared.

Details

Tools required:

• Philips screwdriver
• 3mm Allen key (a long one, at least 100 mm long)
• 2.5mm Allen key.

Step 1

Remove the knobs on each side of the OTA.
When I did this, I found one of the forks to be loose!

Step 2

Turn telescope up-side down and :

• remove battery cover and any batteries,
• remove 3 rubber pads by gently pulling them off. They are secured with silicone(?) above 3 Philips head screws.
• remove the three screws.

The photo below right shows the unit with one screw still in place.

Click to Enlarge The knobs from each side removed		Click to Enlarge The bottom of the unit

Step 3

Carefully pull the cover off. There are two very thin relatively short wires between the battery pack and the circuit boards inside.

Inside there is a cut-out on one side of the metal base – at about 11 0’clock in picture on the right below. The kitchen table is visible through the hole where the screw was!

Slowly rotate this until one of the six screws (there are three for each fork) are revealed. Remove all six screws completely from the unit.

Click to Enlarge After removing the cover from the base unit		Click to Enlarge 1 screw is removed, about 11'oclock position

Step 4

The  forks can now be separated base and then the OTA can separated from the forks.

When you do this, a small “spacer” drops off the shaft on the drive side (see image below).

Click to Enlarge Spacers

The OTA is now ready for use on the new mount.

Click to Enlarge OTA Separated from the Base		Click to Enlarge Bottom of the OTA

Article by Karl van Louwersen (kvl). Discuss this article on the IceInSpace Forum.