[Imme (Jon)]

I’ve really gone off imaging lately due to what I deem pretty poor guiding. I’ve done everything I can think of to tweak the mount but it seems I’m unable to make any noticeable improvements.
My NEQ6 is a couple years old and with the chopping and changing of equipment I’ve gone from it carrying 8kg to around 14kg..... my guiding errors have increased with the weight, going from around 1rms to almost 2.
I don’t see this as acceptable as an average error when imaging (although I am only running a focal length of 910mm so it probably would be ok I guess!)
I’ve been tossing up buying a new mount however I can’t justify the $’s needed to upgrade to something in the high end market when I doubt my imaging gear is going to get any heavier than it is now so a step up to a greater capacity isn’t needed.

So what to do....... after hours of reading and research I’ve decided to do a “BOOM BOOM TUNE”.... what’s a “BOOM BOOM TUNE” you ask......well it’s really similar to a HYPERTUNE but from what I’ve read the term HYPERTUNE has been copyrighted so I can’t call it that...... the worlds gone nuts hey....so BOOM BOOM TUNE it is!!! (PS, I’ve now copyrighted this term myself to ensure no one uses it without first paying me a fee)

I’ve purchased a Rowan Belt mood from Sidereal for backlash, although as we know this only reduces it, doesn’t remove it entirely.
While looking at their site I noticed a new product I haven’t seen before, a Rowan Zero backlash spring loaded setup for the RA axis.... interesting concept however researching it I can find basically no info as it seems to be a fairly new product.
Initially I left it as I thought I’d just take the normal route and balance east heavy to soak up that leftover backlash....but thinking about it, by balancing east heavy I’m actually reducing mount performance to cover an issue with the mount.... why bother doing a BOOM BOOM TUNE ifi still need to make allowances for issues with the mount..... much better to remove to issue to begin with if I can.....so I’ve also ordered the zero backlash RA thingy-ma-jig!!! Should be interesting to see how this thing works and whether it does eliminate backlash all together