[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

Aloha, since my EQ6 is still MIA, I have myself an IIS second hand G11 with Gem 2.
So far the assembly has gone according to plan and I aim to test the resilience of these legendary beasts with gusto- I have already piled on to it my venerable TSA 120 & and an FS 60 with Losmandy plates and rings (ain't the slimmest), later I decided to push for a Gold medal and put an ADM side by side on it and then placed carefully my C11 XLT. (see pic)
My questions are

1. I am used to the CGEM start dialogue so when Gem 2 came up with time and date and then civil time plus offset I was bemused - I assume (correct me please) that civil time is my local time, usually for me looking at the lappie clock. Offset would be 11 hours including DST which there is no facility to add? so just bung in there 11 hrs?
And then the little clock in the corner is my local time but the big numbers are UTC?
2. By the time I finished assembling all the clouds had rolled in so I just entered a star at random (though would be visible sans clouds) and tried to see the G in action- it slewed the wrong way- i.e towards the NW when it should have gone SE (to Aldebaron) - I thought I put my lat and long in correctly - negative -42.53 for South Lat and 147.17 East for Long.
Maybe because I didn't align it initially (no stars) then it doesn't have an internal map about where to - which reminds me of this most important point....
3. I have decided to go Side By Side so I changed the orientation of the saddle by 90' . There were two hex bolts in the saddle but they didn't seem to want to move so I assume it is just a move it- then align it and tell the Gem where you are type thing. Which is cool- just need to check with experienced G11 folk.
4. I got the handbox up and running and scrolled through, then decided to check my balance by doing a fast slew- so I chose slew and then pressed an arrow button.
I got about 2 seconds of slew then a beep then it stopped-why?
When I chose the star it slewed ok. no issues with bounce or overweight as far as I could judge.

5. Home position and park position.
I had to move my refractor back to get balance - so now the back end is very near the wall of my obs in my standard- point South park position. So can you set up a custom home /park position? it doesn't have any indicators about where to start from so I assume (again) you get your alignment done, then you find a place to rest it, then you mark it as your home- please tell me.
6. Maxim Dl connections with Gem 2- ? straight USB?
7. Thats all I think.
Thanks for listening and pondering.
Graham