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Denis,
A bit more research lead me to folks who basically viewed that the higher numbers equate to more torque and an increased period of deceleration when approaching goto target. This protects the gears and motors by ensuring a heavy telescope slewing fast doesn't come to an abrupt stop - thereby stressing the gears less.
So I set RA to 3 and DEC to 2.
Then I took off the face plate (4 screws) and the rear panel (2 screws and two Allen bolts) and watched a few complete revolutions of the gears. At one point in the revolution of two (I guess 60 cog gears - about the size of a 20 cent piece each) - the gears that move slowly and sedately jumped about 4 mm forward in a sudden lurch!
So I cleaned these gears very carefully with some tweezers a removed a tiny bit of gunk out of the gears and sprayed them with some high quality Lithium grease. Next I inspected the main gear and worm - it looked fine - in fact it looked beautiful. Next I let the scope rotate for about 30 minutes - this time there were no jumps or bumps - only a smooth revolution of the gears!
So fingers crossed it looks like things are much improved - and with any luck my next imaging run should be a lot less stressful!
As a final point I must say the built quality of the Vixen gear internals looks really high end - which is very preasing to their proud owner! Too having the confidence to open, inspect and clean the gears if I have to is a side benefit of increasing confidence. All those years with Mechanno as a kid must have paied off!
Matthew
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