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I'm pretty sure I had two boxes only.
Yes/no. Do use the quick polar align method to get you within striking distance of PA. Then Synch according to instructions and begin to collect points. You may need to get your first 6 points manually because your PA may still be too far off. Once the software sees six points it has enough information to be much more accurate in pointing even without changing your PA. It's kind of important to realise that T-Point can be very accurate in pointing even if PA is poor. These are two separate things! Anyway, to get an accurate PA report you need to collect at least 40 points. I don't think this is mentioned in the manual anywhere (in fact I think the manual was (is?) quite confusing about how many points you really need.) but in posts on the SB forum this was stated by the author of T-Point. You won't want to collect 40 points by hand so that is why I suggested that you really need to get your camera doing the hard work by doing automated T-Point runs. Once you collect at least 40 points there will be a PA report but advice is to run the super model and then use that report. They will usually sort of agree, but use the super model report. Another point is to collect points on both sides of the meridian, not just on one side, and if I remember correctly you don't want to wait too long to collect on both sides. There have been postings where lots of points were collected on one side and everything plate solved just fine, but going to the other side of the meridian plate solving would fail. Believe me, I know (!) all of this can seem rather confusing at first. It's a lot easier to just do it than it is to write about it. When I got my mount I actually had never used a CCD camera before so I avoided adding that complication (and I was having massive driver problems with my camera not liking TSX). The result for me was that I made things 100X harder. I was actually shocked when my first attempt at plate solving worked immediately. If you have not done this yet, download the T-Point users manual and read it about 200 times. No, twice might get you going, but more won't hurt! Also think a lot about your camera and drivers. Will it work with TSX? If there is no driver in TSX there might be one for CCDSoft which SB will give you for free if you just ask. You can just tell TSX to use the CCDSoft camera, or the MaxIM camera. If you have no driver problems it should be easy to get T-Point going. Also, if you don't yet have TSX you can request it right now from SB. I did and they provided it in advance of receiving the mount. It's good to read the manuals with the software open.
Peter
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