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Thanks Renormalised,
Yeah, I could get an Eq5, but the minister for finance has just approved the funds for a very special Dobsonian purchase today so the available budget is going into that, stay tuned for more exciting developments on that front tomorrow......
Whats I found is that even on a 20 sec exposure, I was getting "jitter" from the drive gear on the RA wheel, caused by some minor damage that has been happening while I have been slewing around with the drive motor disengaged but still too close to the wheel and burring has resulted in some spots.
I have rectified this with a nail file and by extending the drive wheel off the shaft slightly by loosening the allen key that holds it on so that the drive wheel and the driven RA wheel are matched up in the MIDDLE instead of only the last third of the motor wheel touching the big one.
A quick check shows me that the drive looks smoother now, the consequence of it before is that it looked like the trapezium stars in M42 were smudged in little squiggles as the motor turned causing the LE trails.
Not so much as a long trail in one direction, but more like a little kid's crayon scribble, even on subs as short as 10 secs.
I havent yet tried it out again to see if its improved, but more to the point I want to check what settings for gain and exposure I should use, should I set the gain in the middle for short and low for long subs? or just leave it for all and experiment.
I am trying to shortcut the guessing game so if anyone has practiced this and perhaps mastered it, let me know. I am off to trawl Mike's guides and see if he mentions it at all.
Thanks for commenting.
Chris
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