Thanks to those that have given advice. A fair bit's happened since I posted this, some problems have disappeared and others appeared.
I discovered my Synscan handset is totally pooched and eventually failed. I did buy a replacement handset as the warranty dept of Saxon isn't deemed essential. The new handset worked fine but I was convinced to go EQMOD. This is a lot more fun and thanks to some handy people on this forum ( thanks Martin) I had it up and running fairly quickly. I've been working on drift aligning but that has not worked out as easy as I hoped. Between learning this and f%##g clouds I'm getting nowhere. Once the weather clears up I can spend some time working on it again.
I only recently learned to force calibration but it has made no difference.
Jeff
Please give the Synscan polar alignment routine a go with the handcontroller
I set my EQ6-R mount and 6” newt tonight and polar aligned in 10 minutes with the handcontroller ( see attached PA error which only required 2 iterations)
Then I go back to home position, shut down the mount , disconnect the handcontroller pack it away , connect the EQ Direct cable from laptop to mount , set up eqmod and start my Goto
I tried drift aligning and takes too much time plus your slewing in vastly different parts of the sky at least 40 to 60 degrees apart. With the Syncan method I’m only using 2 stars 10 to 20 degrees apart in azimuth, very quick
Cheers
Martin
Given no matter what I did last night I couldn't get the error below 2800! I've been watching many Youtube videos on the subject and thought I had a grip on the basics... but to no avail. I suspect once I crack it that I'll be wondering why it was so hard.
Hi Jeff make sure that everything is tight on your gear ,do you have any backlash problems ,if so fix that and it may fix all the other problems .Once that was fixed most of my PHD problem disappeared