My EQ6-R pro has arrived, l'm about to set up & mark "home position" and then put everything on it (102mm reflector, 50mm guidescope & cam & nikon (D5200 or 5300....is one better?)) and get the hang of balancing it all.
l bought a new 300mm spirit level to assist and am wondering just how critical being level is? When measuring across the top of the tripod, legs splayed but not actually fixed, it seems that when the mount is added the level is likely to change.....just how critical is it? l don't have a great deal of faith in the tiny bubble level or is that good enough
A good quality aluminium spirit level is fine to use and check all directions NSEW on the plate
The additional weight of the rig doesn’t usually affect things too much as long as you have solid ground ( concrete , paving or similar ) even bricks and pavers under the tripod feet on grass can sink a bit which is not ideal.
Here’s some procedures I put together a while ago , they may seem “old hat” but they just work. If you get your tripod and mount set up accurately, it will save time with polar alignment later ( less adjustments or iterations )
I’ve included the Synscan PA routine which comes with your handcontroller but most folk these days use Pole Master , NINA ( NINA developed their PA routine 15 years after Synscan did ) and many others.
As Martin says, with a close to level mount will "it will save time with polar alignment later ( less adjustments or iterations )". Having said that, I've gone to just using the bubble level and it generally works fine for me.
Being perfectly level isn't 'critical', but the closer you are the easier it will be to get a good PA. If it's not level, then adjusting one axis will have an effect on the alignment of the other axis, so you need to go back & forth between them to get it close. The closer to level you are, the less the effect will be.
Ditto, I level my tripod so that for polar alignment, the altitude of the mount will be close to correct (saves time).
As for azimuth, I use a star near the east/west horizon as the reference - look up its dec and set the mount to that declination, rotate in azimuth to centre this in a finderscope.
This is is good enough for visual, but for imaging I'll refine it using a camera and SharpCap.
