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Old 29-08-2019, 02:29 PM
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The_bluester (Paul)
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
East heavy as a concept I find a little troublesome unless you are willing to manually flip and rebalance as your target passes the meridian. I understand that it means the worm stays in mesh at all times and on the same face but for automated imaging it is a bit of an issue unless you are willing and able to limit yourself to a max of about three hours per target per night to keep the meridian and maybe 45 degrees before it.

Rather than being "east" heavy, I have normally just been counterweight heavy and by enough to be sure that it will overcome any friction in the mount when the scope is on the west, pointed east so the worm stays under some tension at all times.

Basically I am set up so that the scope is imbalanced by enough that the mount stays meshed on the "lee" side of the worm when it is pointed west and the counterweight is going down, but not so imbalanced that tracking is unduly effected when it is pointed east and lifting the counterweight heavy configuration.

I figure if they can rip USB ports out of cameras and do damage when they crash into the leg of the tripod they can probably stand a couple of hundred grams of imbalance.
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