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Ahh Paul if im reading you right you got to have a star virutally above you , early in the evening Rigel would be to low, doing this sorts your Altizuth alignment and then a star 20-35 degrees on the eastern horizon sorts your altiude alignment.
I usally start with the Altizuth adjustment first and then the altiude and then double check .BTW do you have a illu reticle . Looking into a reticle i watch for north/south movement of the guide star and react by adjusting the altizuth handle {for the zenith star} or altiude handle {eastern star} so the star is back in the opposite direction. These adjustments might have to be fairly large as you start , but take it in small steps so you can monitor the star in the eyepice, after a few goes it becomes quite simple. You may of noticed if you turn one of the knobs one way and suddenly go the other way it takes a few turns to take up the slack , annoying , thankfully on mine just the altizuth axis suffers a little . I try and finish the alignment going in one direction so i dont have to turn the knob in the other direction.Hope this makes sense , the frustrating bit is remembering if you should go counterclockwise or clockwise when adjusting the knobs , thats why i try to watch the guide star while adjusting .
After that i just centre a named star, find it in the Autostar catlogue and sync on it {say Canopus}and then find another named star {say Alderbarren} and hit GOTO. This second star is going to be off a bit , just centre it and then sync on it . Your next GOTO should be accurate as usal , when ive done this after getting drift alignment done with a minuim of 5 min for the guide star being centred my accuracy is super [still amazes me }. you may have to do some PEC training for yor imaging though but all my piggyback shots have come out well with no evident tracking errors. Among some tips ive come across its suggested to put some counterweight on the left fork arm to balance the heavier right arm , some "c" batteries in the battery compartment could be the answer , just dont forget them . watch out for your feild stops to , make sure you have the OTA in middle travel . And the big one , dont forget to put the scope in polar mode , ive done it and it drove me bananas trying to figure way things was going crazy.
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