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Old 05-06-2018, 12:50 PM
Wavytone
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Wavytone is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Killara, Sydney
Posts: 4,147
Angry

Just powering it up and seeing if the axes make “Bzzzzt” noises and slews doesn’t prove very much - as I found out once with an AZEQ6 that was basically stuffed.

I’d suggest take along an iPhone with Sky Safari and try the following test:

1. Set up equatorially without a telescope on top. Level and pointing north doesn’t really matter, for this well assume the mount is level and oriented north-south regardless of which way it is actually facing.

2. Manually put mount on the park position (declination -90, hour angle 0 ie dec axis pointing vertically down opposite the meridian).

3. Set the date and time for say 9pm in the evening.

4. Set Sky Safari for the same date and time (approximate will do).

5. Start a 2-Star alignment and pick two stars clearly above the horizon according to Sky Safari.

6. Observe where it slews to, from the park position it should go to the general direction of the first star; press ENTER and let it slew to the second star, and press ENTER for that.

If it appears to slew to roughly the right position, all good. If it tries to skew to some wacky position like driving the scope into the ground, it fails.

7. Assuming it passed 6, try a GOTO to some obvious candidate like Jupiter, if it points in the right direction (according to Sky Safari) then all good.
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