[Poita (Peter)]

I've been helping some people locally do a drift alignment, and from their feedback it seems they have read countless guides, and looking at threads here and on Cloudy Nights and other sites, there are countless posts from frustrated newbies and not-so-newbies when drift aligning is attempted.

I'm wanting to put together a truly definitive guide, and some of the things I've noticed that are missing are:

1) When pointing at the star in the 'South' or North or East or West, what does the mount 'look like'. Many of my people were choosing totally the wrong star to work with, so I'm intending to put photos in of a typical mount position, and particularly good stars to choose from various locations at various times of year

2) The direction adjustment. Though this is well described, this seems to always do their heads in.

3) The amount of adjustment

4) Some reality checks to see if you are doing it right.

5) I'd like to add drift alignment during the day with a solar filter for people that would like to get 'close' before nightfall.

What I'm after is some anecdotes from people as to when it finally 'clicked' for you. What was the Eureka moment when it suddenly made sense? What was the piece of 'missing' information that finally fell into place for you?

Drift alignment is actually really easy once you know how, I'd like to try and address it so that it is easy for people first time out, and I think collecting the common mistakes and having multiple explanations will help.

So please, post your story of when it suddenly made sense for you.