Thanks Visionoz and Alan - I figgured it out!!!
turns out that i had set everything up correctly but when I was connecting my iPad's SkySafari to the mount via WiFiScope (from Main Sequence) it was overwriting my mount's known location!!! well, actually it was overwriting the Logitude's WEST indicator with EAST!!! from that point on my mount thinks it's in western Mongolia!!! even power cycling the mount wouldn't clear that! I had to hit UNDO 4x's while in the Alignment task to reset my Lat/Lon to WEST! No wonder my GoTo's were off! I setup Stellarium to control my mount (instead of SkySafari/WiFiScope) and it worked perfectly!
thanks much for your suggestions!
-Jas