Thanks again for this, Martin and Jay.
I have a question about expectation of consistency with alignment. I begin by acknowledging that alignment reported with synscan is an estimate
Last night I set up very carefully and was very happy with my first 2 star alignment, both stars were really close, one viewable in the 28mm eyepiece, the other in centre half of the finder scope. I was expecting a fairly low error, but the reports was 10 degrees and 7 degrees off. I didn't trust it, so switched mount off, undid clutches, returned mount to home position and turned back to start again without touching alt or az adjusters on the mount.
Second time, again, stars were close to aligned to start out, report was now 5 deg and 2 deg off. I was wondering if i should have expected the same report? They seem a long way off, especially considering the amount of slewing i needed to do to centre was almost identical on both star alignments. I started a polar alignment to see how much adjustment it would take, and canopus was not only out of the EP, it was miles out of the finder scope field, too, which is hard work for me to correct. This is what happens each night I am out... I start to get close to alignment, say in the teens of minutes on both axes, then I get a report saying I'm many degrees out and once adjusted, I'm starting all over again.
At this point, I just started viewing objects, without doing a single polar alignment. I was getting close enough to the big items that I could then just centre them and look/image them. I know this is not a fix, but it did break a streak of having nothing to show night after night of trying to align my scope!