I dunno, been using a bog-standard Silva for years (I am ALWAYS portable - nothing permanent). I use the iPhone compass occasionally too. I then polar align with SharpCap, and always have it in the "Excellent" range within 5 minutes without any problem.
I stand about a metre behind the mount, eyeballing it along the RA axis. I don't go to close to the mount at all, and always have the mount OFF and no EM sources around whilst doing this rough setup.
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