HEQ5 PRO problems

[raymo]

I bought a used HEQ5PRO and tried a rough and ready session by lining up the mount by compass, and levelling it by eye,and doing a 2 star alignment. It surprised me by placing several objects that were fairly close together, about half way in from the edge of a low power field.
When I tried the moon, which was only about 5 degrees from the previous object, it slewed the long way round [about 350 degrees], and
ended up about 35-40 degrees off target. Did I do anything wrong?
Also, later that night the scope clobbered a tripod leg, to a loud clashing of gears. Does anyone know whether it will have done any damage?
Lastly, I have seen other posts lamenting the lack of southern stars
in the database for alignment purposes, does anyone know if any of
the later updates have corrected this situation?
Thanks for reading about my potential problems, and a HAPPY
NEW YEAR to you all.
raymo

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Forgive me if this sounds obvious, but I've made this mistake myself. Did you align the leg with the letter "N" to north or south? In the southern hemisphere it should point south.

[Randallk]

Do you have the mount manual. There is a pretty good explanation of the mount set up in the manual and it is downloadable from:

http://www.skywatcher.com/swtinc/cus...t.php?class1=1

Hope this wil help,
Cheers!

[Peter.M]

If you only do a 2 star align and the scope does a meridian flip, as you describe when you slewed to the moon the pointing will not be accurate. 3 star will be far better, I now use eqmod for its superior pointing.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

The clutches would probably have saved your gears from major damage.

[raymo]

Thanks to all 4 of you for your input. Yes,the mounting was aligned south. The drives seem o.k. so the clutches must have done their job.
I shall try a more precise alignment next.
I am well into my 70's, so technology is starting to leave me behind,
so please tell me what eqmod is. Still hoping somebody can tell me
if more southern stars have been added in the hand controller updates.
regards raymo

[Steffen]

I've been known to spend a couple of hours fiddling with a recalcitrant HEQ5Pro mount (the hours with best seeing of course), only to find that I botched the DST setup. I managed to dial in a time zone of +11 (Sydney summer) and then saying "yes" to Daylight Savings. Just another thing to be aware of, I guess…

Cheers
Steffen.

[2stroke (Jay)]

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/ is the best place to start. All you need is a notebook and a eqdirect cable http://www.bintel.com.au/Mounts---Tr...oductview.aspx Then some planetarium software and the best one i've found is free http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/start Yes it hasn't got nice opengl effects but its lightweight and works perfect with eqmod and is 100% free. EQmod is also 100% free so you only pay for the cable. It's a bit confusing at first because you have to understand how things work but if you read the well written guides they have along with the youtube videos you can't go wrong and will be off and going in no time. You will never have to worry about finding an alignment star again because you can use any in the sky. Also eqmod has mount limits so your mount will never suffer from this again.

[raymo]

Thanks to Steffen and 2 stroke for your help. It's all a bit embarrassing, as I have been an avid observer, imager, and astronomy educator for many, many years. I have a Celestron SLT which lets me use any bright object for alignment, which is great. [why can't skywatcher do that?] I also have a Celestron
C-8 orange tube [which I love], and a 10" dob. plus now the HEQ5 with an 8" newt. I had A super polaris mount for many years, but this is my first dabble with a goto equatorial
mount.
Incidentally, I find it very difficult to find alignment stars quickly in my
9x50 finder, so I am using a red dot finder, which makes it so easy.
Hope I haven't bored you all,
raymo