Gday Veejo
Quote:
|
not being able to over-ride auto alignment will become a nuisance
|
You can turn off the full autoalign, but you cant "easily" get past all the guff at the beginning where it levels itself, finds home, does GPS etc etc etc.
With my ETX125, i can just plonk it down, turn on, manually set the tube and do an align in less time than the LS takes to initialise.
Horses for courses i guess.
Quote:
|
Also the lack of clutch has had me wondering also, how do I move the tube vertical so that it can be packed into it's case if the battery goes flat
|
Brute force and ignorance
There are clutches in there, but they arent user adjustable.
The DEC has a rubber clutch plate and the RA is a "dry" clutch.
If you grab the OTA "casting" ( not the OTA ) and apply firm gentle pressure, the DEC clutch will slip to allow you to set the OTA if the batteries die etc. The RA clutch can also be manually forced, but it may squeal like a stuck pig when you do it, as there is a pin inside that sometimes isnt fitted fully.
Just for info, the DEC clutch can cause problems, as you cant release it to test for balance.
For fun, I set a unit up with Meade 1209 Microfocusser on the back, with a 2" diagonal, a binoviewer and 2 heavy EPs
With this load on the back, the DEC clutch actually "oozed".
Until i found out what was happening, the aligning and viewing was really interesting as i couldnt understand why the tracking rate was so far off
Also, if you put 2 "C" cells in the left slot of the battery compartment, it will keep the GPS almanac alive and hence speed up GPS fixes.
Another trick is to always start with the OTA pointing East of Mag Nth,
as the tube always goes CCW looking for Nth. Very annoying to spin 355deg if you are just west of Nth.
Andrew