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Drift Alignment Problem
I carried out my first drift alignment exercise with my C8 on a standard wedge mount. In the drawing below are my results. I am concerned about an apparent EW drift that corrects itself. I have no idea what the periodic error of my C8 is but I would be surprised if it were as large as the diagram indicates. The diagrams are of the drift screen in BYE.
Explanation:
The top two are Altitude drifts using Alphard 09h28m13.127s -08°42'51.96" – about 9:30 pm. They are both 221 second drifts.
The first is my raw setup, the second is after I raised the altitude by adjusting the tripod leg. I repeated step 2 and got pretty much the same result. Since this was a test of my setup and procedure I did not attempt any further correction.
The lower diagram is of Azimuth, Cursa 05h08m28.651s -05°04'24.90" – about 10:00 pm. 230 second drift. I must have been good on the compass, but again the EW drift was large. The movement was uniform in that it went east to west and then west to east at the same rate.
I read that a slippy clutch can do it, but I retightened it before the second test and it felt pretty firm.
I am going to repeat the exercise tonight and run for at least 10 minutes, this time I will snapshot the screen, but in the meanwhile can anyone advise if they have had a similar problem and what steps I can take.
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