[gregbradley]

I have a Vixen Polarie and its a great little unit. It struggles outside its wieght limit (I am using a Nikon D800E with a grip, a heavier battery and a Samyang 24mm F1.4 or Nikon 14-24mm F2.8 lens - both are heavy).

I have the polar alignment scope and I have only tried to use it twice in a location that had trees blocking a clear view of the South.

So I found a quick way to align it based on CCD drift aligning.

Firstly level the tripod so you know you are horizontal. You can use a simple bubble level to do this.

Now set the Polarie to the correct latitude for your location. This seems to be pretty easy with the nice illuminated angle indicator on the side of the Polarie. I also got a cheap digital inclinometer off ebay to check this.
I think you can get it pretty close quite easily and not worry about it further.

Now set the Polarie halfway between Hadar (the closer of the pointers to the southern cross) and Achenar. Use the compass to get it close to start with and adjust it further this way. If these stars are not visible then the LMC SMC and Alpha Centauri form a rough triangle with the SCP.

Using around a 24mm lens take a 30 second exposure. Examine the image. If it show bad star trailing then swing the Polarie one way or the other. Take another. Examine. Is it better or worse. If its better you moved the right way. If its worse you moved it the wrong way. Now you are getting a preliminary feel for how far off you are. Repoint the Polarie east or west on a best guess spot. Take another. Examine. You can get round stars within 3 or 4 goes of this. If you turn off long exposure noise reduction you are only waiting 30 seconds to find out how close you are. So its kind of fast.

I was able to adjust it to quite round stars within 5 minutes or so.

The accessory that slips on the hotshoe would be helpful and speed this process up.

I hope this helps.

Greg.