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Thank you to Andrew, David, and Phil.
Last night (after I wrote the message to the forum) I went out and did a standard assembly of my LX90-10" ACF and an "Easy Align".
It is my practice to do a fairly exact level on the tripod top anyway (even with the LX90-8" GPS, which did have the LNT). And from experience I know where north is at my place of residence, so it's easy to point somewhere near that. Adding the necessity of levelling the tube was not onerous - it takes perhaps five seconds.
I am OK with using the "Easy Align" instead of Automatic Align. It is faster. But North is not as reliable. And if the tripod level is not correct ... well a two star align will not pick up an ectopic axis. For that, three stars are required, if my geometry serves me aright. The old method with the LNT would appear to pick up an axis error better than a two star align.
Anyway, I remain interested in the whole question. Once again, thank you to Andrew, David, and Phil. Your thoughts are much appreciated.
Andrew, if the protocol has been eng'd, is it worth implementing the LNT bit (apart from the clock) on something like an Arduino? I do a fair bit of AVR programming, and this might be a nice project. If you wished to continue the correspondence (off list) I'll send you my email address.
Regards,
Tony Barry
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