Hi Gav,
Read your problems here and on Yahoo.
It’s hard to figure out what’s up with your mount and it must be terribly frustrating for you. I have had the Atlas same as EQ6 for some months.
It did not work to well at first but since I got my 3rd !! hand controller its seems ok.
But the first time I used it with 3.01 the mount was great.
I used it 3 times with that firmware and the second and third time not as good in the
go to’s.
So I decided to upload 3.1. Now I have used this only twice so far and apart from the problem of uploading the firmware via a laptop with only USB then using USB to Serial adaptor and this did not work, I had to use another computer with serial port.
I have had a few problems with it. The backlash had to be reset , as every time I used the up down left right buttons it slewed away then came back, very strange. I fixed this by setting the backlash to 00.00.01 in both axis.
But then when I wanted to use alignment stars I gave a list but the list that did not have Rigel in it!! Who knows why? Can’t even find Rigel in the Stars list also.
First time out with 3.1 I used a 3 star alignment and the go to’s where in the field of a 1deg eyepiece. By the way I do use a 12 mm illuminated reticle eyepiece, as you do also.
Second time out it did not put objects in a 1.5 deg field eyepiece.
It seems what you have done is fine and it should work. Why it does not I do not know.
Just one thing and I’m sure you have it right make sure date is, month/ day/ year.
I did this wrong once!!
Set the time to +10 then set daylight saving to yes.
I have had 3 go to mounts one a LX200 gps and one a Meade LXD55 then the EQ6 with skyscan. The LX200 was way better at pointing to objects. If it’s a 10/10 then the EQ6 is about a 6 or 7 at best. The LXD55 had its own problems which I wont go into.
I would like to pick my own stars with the skyscan with out it giving me a list to choose from, when I do my alignments. But its seems it does not. Yes it gives a list of about 10 or so Stars but I wanted more of my own choice.
From now on I will keep a log book on my set ups to try and figure out the best steps to getting the mount right. Yes I do use a level to set the tripod and not rely on the mounts level as I have found this is out. And I use a compass to set the mount and then do a drift alignment to get the polar alignment right.
But I want to work on it so I don’t have to do this as often, especially when I’m only viewing.
So far I have found the weakest link to these mounts is the Handcontroller.
The rest seems fine.
