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Old 20-02-2008, 02:05 AM
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g__day (Matthew)
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Sydney
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Down to under 10 arc seconds drift in an hour!

Well after alot of effort it now looks like I've tuned my rig to be tracking accurate to about 10 arc seconds an hour - and I'd say 70% of my error is still DEC drfit - so its polar alignment related error.

After I don't know how many late nights trying to drift align and wondering why my mount was 1 arc second a minute fast in RA - I found it simply was scope heavy. This surprised me because I'm sure I balanced everything!

But since I added a 2" Bintel SCT focuser to my MAK - thanks to the other thread that mentions Skywatcher to 2" collar adapters exist - I decided to loosen RA clamp and check my set-up's balance - which wasn't good!

So I moved the weights all the way down (and I'd say its still a tad scope heavy still) and checked its tracking. In RA tracking Acrux I'd say there was less than 10 arc seconds RA drift in a hour - using the seperation of the binary stars as a distance scale against the illuminated reticle's cross hairs.

So its been ages - but I am finally seeing consistency and the performance I sensed was possible from a Vixen Atlux. Now that pointing seems within 30 arc seconds of target - if I can get tracking to have no DEC drift and single digit RA arc second drift per hour I'll be delighted!

Many thanks to all that provided suggestions and thoughts along the way - it feels so good to be close to where I wanted to be!

Last edited by g__day; 20-02-2008 at 12:06 PM.
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