Hi, finally caught up. Yeah, I did try the alignment routine using the handset on a night when alignment wasn't my main priority. As Jonathan said it worked pretty much the same as alignmaster but actually better in two important respects, particularly given the limited amount of sky I see from my garden:
- There are vastly more stars to choose from - most of which I didn't know but have since made a concerted effort to learn; and
- Unlike alignmaster it doesn't seem to mind how far off alignment you are at the start of the routine.
With Alignmaster I found that I might go all the way through only to find it says error too large move the mount and try again.
Both require an iterative process for accurate alignment to be achieved, but essentially it takes you to a star, you centre slew it, then to another, centre it. Once done it moves in RA to where it thinks alignment should be and you move the mount physically in RA to centre, then the same for dec.
I may use the hand controller at AF for an initial alignment and then see if Alignmaster agrees or refines it (or just changes it completely).
I don't see why it should be less accurate than Alignmaster though. We will see.
One other thing - not really related, but worth mentioning is that when you go to the home position using the hand controller it does a kind of dance whilst it finds the position which doesn't happen when you home with EQMOD. I assume the hand controller is more accurate for this...?
Chris