Better success last night (and cooler outside than in the house
),
Things started strangely with the unit not remembering my lat, long or time zone, so I had to re-enter all that as well as the normal date and time. I just carried the mount out (without weights or OTA) and plonked it down in the normal place but didn't level or anything. I did a 3 star alignment and this time some new stars were added to the list. Anyway, I picked Sirius, then Acrux (which had poked out from behind a tree) and then Achernar was in the list, which was what I hoped to find at an earlier date. With a successful 3 star alignment I started plugging in various things from the object lists and they kept slewing happily into pretty much the middle of view. Then I tried picking numerous obscure NGC listings from my star charts and tiny smudges of various sorts came into view. This system is really very good. I was very satisfied with the results. Thanks folks for your helpful input as usual.
Bruce