[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Hi Everyone,

I did a field test of the new pier last night and while I was out, I noticed the same thing as I had with my tripod, the goto on my mount rarely gets the target within the inner third of the finderscope and very rarely, if ever, onto the CCD FOV.

I have the EQdirect cable (no synscan handset) and drive the scope using Stellarium Scope and EQAscom. I start the scope and then Stellarium Scope, then Stellarium and the "scope" target appears on the SCP, I click on say Canopus, the scope slews to where Canopus is supposed to be, but then I have to slew manually with the game pad or the computer normally south and west in order to get Canopus centred. Once done, I "sync" on Stellarium using CTRL-3 and this realigns the scope reticle onto Canopus, then I slew off to another target not too far away and find the same problem, even if it is in the same quadrant.

Subsequent repositioning and syncs in Stellarium build up the EQAscom pointing model and I can see where the scope thinks it is pointing, but I rarely do a nearby goto and have the target centred in either the CCD camera or the finderscope.

I have checked the tripod is level, the pier is level and the SCP is in the polar scope, the tube is pointing to the SCP before starting, the scope is off before I start connecting, the GPS coords in EQAscom are spot on, as is the date, time and altitude (confirmed by GPS) and Stellarium Scope is using JNOW coords and the time is set from NTP servers on the PC.

Am I missing something? What could be causing my goto's to be so crap?

Any ideas?

Cheers

Chris