Drift- alignment problems.please help!

[lookus]

i have a heq5 pro and i am having problems with my drift alignment. i am relatively new to this ,however i have been successful at this a few times. i understand that drift alignment involves orientating the scope so that a star will not drift north or south while looking to the west( in my case) and at the meridian. i am able to do this. the star will drift niether north nor south for a good 10-15 mins.

my problem is that no matter if i am looking at the meridian or to the west , my star will always drift slowly west in my eyepiece, while remaining perfectly within the lines in relation to north and south.

what am i doing wrong. i cannot get my head around what could be wrong. any help would certainly delay insanity.

thanks

[lesbehrens (Les)]

is your scope balanced correctly. i have this problem at times.

[RobF (Rob)]

Another thought that comes to mind - until you get the mount properly polar aligned, there will be some star movement that isn't in the DEC axis. Usually very small compared to the DEC movement though.

[lookus]

Originally Posted by lesbehrens

is your scope balanced correctly. i have this problem at times.

i believe it is correctly balanced. i is hard to tell however as the RA axis is so stiff it does not even move if the axis is unlocked unless it is grossly unbalanced.

i also considered this, thinking that if it were unbalanced and the motor was struggling to track properly. to allow for this error i deliberately unbalanced it so that the scope should bring the star back toward the centre. it did not help. the star continues to drift west only. it moves out of my FOV in about 10-15 mins while remaining perfectly between the north/south lines in my eyepiece.

[toryglen-boy (Duncan)]

is the tracking actually on?

[lookus]

Originally Posted by toryglen-boy

is the tracking actually on?

yes. sidereal tracking enabled. if i switch tracking off, the star moves west much faster.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

If it is only moving in a westerly direction then it maybe that your motor is running slow. this is not an uncommon problem unfortunatly