Ok what have i done wrong

[leon]

Hi All
Last week i took my 12" SCT of it's peir to put on a wedge so i could polar align the scope.

Prior to that it was well aligned and all was well.
due to some wedge problems i decided to forget about the polar align bit and placed the scope back on the peir.

I realise that i have to realign the scope, ok that's not to hard as it all went to plan the first time.

Did exactly the same thing as before, but now the pointing is miles off, although it tells me that alignment was successful i sure isnt, nowwhere near any objected entered into it.

So i tried it again and then it told me it couldnt find home position, and instructed me to get it serviced, so i continued and it told me the align was again successful, then it decided to beep at me every ten seconds, and was still miles off.

Although the batteries are pretty new could this have an effect on the slewing etc. if they were flat so to speak.

I mean i only move it ten feet, put it on a table, and then moved it back on the peir.

So would anyone have any suggestions of what could be wrong.

Cheers leon

[Blue Skies (Jacquie)]

Just a wild stab in the dark...but have you changed the alignment on the hand controller from alt-az to equatorial?

[sheeny (Al)]

Time and position in the controller still correct?

Al.

[leon]

Hi guys, i'm not sure about this but i do know that the daylight saving option is off, thought about it in bed last night

And it's point accuracy seems to be about one hour out according to star positions, and about 15 degrees.

Could this be the problem.

It seems to do everything correct until it wants to slew to the two stars for alignment, than it's way off.

i'll set it all again tonight and see how we go.

[33South (Chris)]

Hi Leon

With the 2 Meades Ive had (not lx200s) when adding a wedge you need to go into the Autostar setup menu and tell it is in Polar mode. As they are all Autostar based maybe.....

[leon]

I hade a bit of a play with the controller, and the settings and found a few things wrong.

Firstly i found that the time, date and other settings dont stay put if you switch off the scope, but are saved if you park the thing.

also i didn't have daylight saving option set, and the time that i was using was on am, instead of pm, so i reckon with all that fixed it should be ok.

We will see tonight.

Cheers Leon

[Dennis]

Hi Leon

You didn't cover the mount configuration, as mentioned by a couple of the guys above. This may mean that it is not relevant to your system, but it might be worth checking?

I know that with my Vixen GPDX and Skysensor 2000 GoTo controller, I have the options in the software for setting the mount config as follows:

• Alt-Az,
• Equatorial – Polar Aligned
• Equatorial – Non Polar Aligned

However, as I have no knowledge of the Meade system, I may be barking up the wrong tree here. If the Meade controller can detect the changing of the mount config from an Alt-Az config to an Equatorial config through you adding the wedge, I would be mightily impressed!

Cheers

Dennis

[leon]

Thanks Dennis, yes the Meade system works the same, and can be changed to what you want, i think i might have it worked out as i described in my post prior to yours, only tonight will tell if the smoke happens to disappear.


Thanks for you reply.

Cheers Leon