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I know nothing about the PMX, but I believe that enabling the encoders on the EQ8 causes issues with goto accuracy, which may screw with plate solving based PA. Could this be related?
I've got an NEQ6 on a pier footing (1100x1100x600mm of reinforced concrete), but still sitting on the tripod. I've spent ages on PA. Fairly happy with RA, but DEC is still a bit off. I want DEC off a touch so that I can guide in only one direction on DEC, but it's a bit further out than I'd like right now and needs more work.
PHDLab experimental feature reports a DEC drift of 2.17"/min, giving a total of 8.76' out, which is pretty far out. You wouldn't believe it, but that's actually still good enough for my widefield broadband imaging (1.4"/px) and will only give 0.22px of field rotation in a 10min exposure, and I only take exposures in the area of 4mins. Still, I'll be working on that at some point in the near future.
Interesting to note that when I originally aligned this, the DEC graph (PHD2) was dead flat. Having said that, seeing was pretty terrible that night and I wonder if that screwed with the drift trend estimation.
This last time I used Astrotortilla for a rough alignment, then followed up with PHD2 drift. AT did not work well for my EQ8, presumably due to the encoders, but seems to work better with the NEQ6.
Obvious though it may be, if you do drift align, make sure you're pointing at the right place in the sky when you drift for each axis ;-)
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