[Andrew C]

I have an old (2003) Celestron Advanced GT eq mount that I have not used for a while. I have a 150mm Newtonian attached to it.

I've often wondered what performance I should be able to expect in terms of accurate slewing to find an object, as it seems to vary from very accurate (an arcmin or two) to maybe 20 arcmin in the same session. This is not such an issue with exchangeable eyepieces, but is a pain when I'm using the mount in conjunction with a video-astro camera, as the object often is outside the field and is then difficult to find.

I'm quite confident of my polar alignment to within 5 arcmin, and also the 3 star alignment procedure.

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether my expectations are too high for this mount, and/or whether the various refinements such as final alignment slewing from a particular direction to counteract backlash are important??

Thanks, Andrew