Hi Steve. K3 (either V2 or V3) is the bees knees when it comes to drift aligning. Atm I'm having to setup fresh every night without any sort of marks on the ground, (that's about to change) and I can be polar aligned to well within 1 arcsec/min drift in declination within 30 -40 min. Assuming of course I'm left alone.
It takes a while to get used to it and I don't have anything written up atm, being going to for a while but .....
BTW don't do any sort of star alignment until after you have completed your polar drift alignment.
The trick is to forget everything you ever learnt about if the star drifts north move the mount this way, unless you are using newt then you move it this way, or is that if you are using a wedge.......I never did work it all out.
Step 1. Center your azimuth adjustment on the mount head. Get your mount roughly level. Use a compass to get your RA pointed somewhere near south. If you know your magnetic deviation then certainly apply that. When I first started this technique I used to use a piece of dowel about a meter long stuck up the RA shaft. This helped with adjusting to the compass. You don't have to be really close because the first move you are going to make will be a big one.
Step 2. Level your mount then set your elevation to your latitude. Again you don't have to be super accurate. I used to use a template of the angle of my latitude and a level on top to place on the dowel to set my altitude. You can do that as well, in fact it gets you pretty close, but it's not necessary.
Step 3. Slew to a star at 0 deg declination and somewhere pretty close to the meridian. +/- 5 deg either way would be fine. Center a star in the eyepiece and then swap the eyepiece for an illuminated reticle and center the star.
Step 4. Now this is the tricky part. Observe which way the star drifts. Now grab the two back legs and pick the mount up and move it about 3-5 inches sideways. It doesn't matter which way. Recenter the star and check the drift. If it drifts quicker you know you have gone the wrong way and have to pick up the mount and move it the other way the same distance again, ie 6-10 inches. If the stars drift has slowed then you know you have moved the right way.
If you wanted to you could make note of which way you moved and use that direction to adjust the azimuth controls to improve you alignment once you start K3 but it isn't essential.
Step 5. (make sure you aren't belting against a let with your ota
Center the star in the reticle and then insert your webcam. Start K3. Focus the star. Click on the reticle icon on the toolbar and center the star. Using your hand paddle move the star in declination. Make sure when you push the top button the star goes up and is parallel to the reticle stadia. Don't worry which way the RA button moves the star but just check so that you know which button moves it which way.
NB. If you haven't already make sure you go into Tools>Telescope and set the scope and webcam parameters.
Step 6. Click on the drift explorer icon. Using the first icon on the Drift Explorer (Target Icon) click on the star. The graph looks pretty but ignore it for a moment. At the top of the Drift Explorer are a number of settings. The one you are interested in is the reading under the heading DEC; ..."/min. This will tell you have fast you are drifting in Declination. Make a note of this number. Now you adjust your azimuth adjuster to move the star but at the same time keep your star on the screen using your hand paddles. This takes a bit of practice
Give your azimuth adjustment half a dozen good cranks, keeping the star on the screen using your paddle. Click on the target icon and reclick on your star. This will reset all readings.
Step 7. Now check your Dec reading. If has gotten larger then you have moved the wrong way so you want to come back the other way double what you originally moved. Again use the handpaddle. Recenter the star and retarget it. Check your Dec. It should be a lower number now than the original. This is a good thing
. Keep adjusting your azimuth, recentering and retargeting your star until the Dec reading is about +/- 1arcsec/min.
Step 8. Now slew to the east, (I use east but west will do) at 0 Declination and about 15-20 deg above the horizon. Center a star with your reticle, remove the reticle and replace with webcam. Move mount with handpaddle to make sure webcam is square to declination again.
Step 9. The process is the same here except the star adjustments will be up and down and not left and right. If you have selected a start to the east (don't know about the west as I've never had to use one) your adjustments are the same as if you were using a reticle. Keep bringing the star back to the center. In other words you can use the pink graph to adjust the star to go the other way it is drifting. Initially use fairly large adjustments until the drift starts to slow, then use smaller adjustments. Keep adjusting until you get to +/- 1 arcsec/min or so.
Step 10. Repeat the azimuth adjustment. It won't need much now, you just need to tweek it, and I mean just tweek it. On a good nights seeing you should be able to get less than 0.5 arcsec/min. On poor nights seeing trust the readings at the top, don't worry if the graph is jumping up and down.
Step 11. Repeat the Altitude adjustment with tweeks. Same as the previous.
That's about it. It seems like a lot but once you have done it a couple of times it will be second nature and you will have an polar alignment within 30 - 40 min that could take someone days using a reticle.
This process is a modification of the pdf file available in the file section of the Yahoo K3 user group.
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
