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G'Day John
I will try and answer some of your questions and, I hope you don't mind, I will be slightly critical on one aspect. My only criticism is that the focus is slightly soft, ie, could be a little sharper, over the period of a night, focus changes with colder temps, not sure on the Vixen but it definately happens with an SCT.
As far the quiding is concerned, will GuideMaster allow you to Calibrate the drive. I use an ST-4, so whilst procedures are different, the basics are the same. Before taking any shots, I allow the guider to go through about 5 minutes of guiding corrections to settle down, doing a drive calibration is a critical step to successful guiding. I have my mount drift aligned so the star stays on the crosshairs for at least 1/2 hour without moving, the better you can get that the better your guiding will be, if you can eliminate most of the DEC corrections your guiding errors will be reduced significantly.
I don't know what software you are using but, I use ImagesPlus 2.75. I use it to automaticaly combine my Flat field, Light, Dark and Bias frames, when these are combined and the Darks and Bias removed, the Amp Glow, at the lower right hand corner, and other hot pixels etc are removed and averaged out. This is shooting with RAW's.
As far as the camera triggering immediately, this is caused by the camera being on when the long exposure cable is plugged in, leave the camera off until the cable is attached to the computer then turn the camera on.
Not sure if this will help or not.
Cheers
JohnG
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