Need some help with guiding.

[White Rabbit]

Just when you think you have it all figured out.

Before I went back to Scotland in December, my guiding was really good and now that I've come back and reset my gear my guiding is all over the place. The only difference is that now I'm using a 5D Mkii instead of a 1000D and a newer version of phd 1.12.0.

I've checked everything balance is good (at least I think it's good ;) ) Polar alignment is good. I used align master to get me into the ball park the phd to get me home.

I'm pulling my hair out, and I dont have much left. Attached is a picture of my settings and graph. Can some one take a look at it and let me know what I'm doing wrong.

The graph goes along fine and then just wiggs out and takes for every to correct. I had an issue where I thought it wasnt guiding in dec but now I think it my settings.

any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[[1ponders]]

It looks to me like something is moving/flexing suddenly. How is your guidescope attached and how is your guide camera attached to the guidescope

[White Rabbit]

Thanks for the reply, but I've checked all the fittings and everything is tight and none of the cables are pulling on the mount either. One thing that concerns me is that it's very very slow to correct n dec at the moment, could that be a clue?

Thanks

[White Rabbit]

Having had a look at my graph thats been running all night now, I've noticed that it seems to wig out at set intervals. I'm using PHD to guide and backyard EOS to control my 5D, I have it set to dither, could that be the problem???
I'll turn dither off and see if that fixes the problem.

Thinking out loud lol.

[[1ponders]]

I'm very surprised at your mx Dec. I've never run mine over 150 and had good guiding in Dec. I got spikes in Dec, though I can't see how that would affect RA. Also your Min motion seems rather low, how does it react with a larger setting, 0.3 or higher. I also run my RA hys >30 most of the time as well.

Just some thought to try

[DavidTrap]

Dithering sounds like it could be your culprit - I don't think PHD plays well with others (except maybe Nebulosity). If something else was "nudging" the mount and PHD was trying to drag it back to the starting point that may cause some significant elongation...

DT

[[1ponders]]

I don't use EQMOD at all so I don't know how its settings are affecting phd if all???

[Screwdriverone]

Hi WR,

Try increasing the Ascom pulse guide settings for RA and DEC on the top right using the sliders.

I set mine to both 0.9 the other night and found that it made the scope more aggressive.

Not sure as to what they should be set to normally, but I do remember sliding these all the way up and then not having any tracking issues after that.

Give this a go.

I'm only a relatively newbie for PHD and EQMod settings, but probably cant hurt?

Cheers

Chris

[White Rabbit]

Thanks for the replys.

turning off dithering in backyard eos seems to have fixed the large spikes and it was my backlash that was causing it to take so long to come back down. I'll try the back lash setting is eq mod and seel if that helps me. But I'm still not really happy as my dec is still up and down and not tracking steady.

I use to run my max dc at 150 as well but I was having problems with it just not guiding in dec, this seemed to be the only way I could get the mount at least moving dec. I'll move it back down to 150 as at least I kow that it's sending commands now.

Screw driver, checkout the eqmod videos on you tube they are really helpful and they tell you not to slide the bars all the way up.

Thanks again guys.