Gday Evan
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I think what may have contributed to my confusion is where the manual talks about high precision mode and manual star syncing. It says that it works well for that particular region of the sky, but if you move to a different part, another relevant local star sync may be required.
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That is correct if you have a bad alignment model or arent properly polar aligned but did a one star align ( and hence dont have a model ), or you have orthogonality errors.
In its simplest form, the scope has an encoder on each axis and when you do a one star align, it reverse calculates what encoder value = 0 for each axis, based on the theoretical values for the target star. Every time you do a future synch, it simply resets this zero datum value to suit the currrent star, so it works well in the local region, but may not be correct elsewhere.
If you have got yr RA axle very well polar aligned, doing a synch anywhere will still reset the datums in the same way, hence why you can just do a synch after drifting, vs do a full realign.
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After some minor adjustments I was able to keep the SCP asterism stationary whilst everything else spun around it.
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Thats good, but one thing i find at times is it is difficult to get near at first, esp if the asterism at the pole isnt visible yet. In that case, you can sometimes do the polar one star first, and use the much brighter sig oct to get the wedge close "mechanically".
Then instead of drifting, just use the spin test to get the OTA parallel to the RA axle and again use the wedge controls to find/centre the asterism.
After that, again goto a bright star near the equator and synch.
Lots of ways to skin the cat.
Andrew