drift in RA

[Sgtfretsurfer]

Iv been trying to get my head around drift aligning recently. Iv read alot of guides and iv got a pretty good idea of what im doing. But it doesnt seem to go right.
i know im supposed to be watching out for drift in the DEC axis and ignoring any drift in the RA axis. Thats fine and through drift aligning i can eliminate the drift in the DEC axis, but i cant account for an overwhelming, ever increasing drift in the RA axis (that is to say, that all drift can be perfectly corrected by pushing one direction on the hand controller, which moves the RA axis).
i know this could be PE (although i thought that was supposed to drift back and forward? this is one directional), but is there any thing else that could cause this??

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

A lot of the instructions for polar alignment say that drift in RA is only caused by an innaccurate drive. This is wrong. RA drift can also occur when your polar alignment is off and it then looks like your motor is going at the wrong rate. If you are on the meridian and have no drift in dec, but your polar axis it too low, it will look like your motor is going slightly too fast and if your axis is too high it will look like your motor is going slightly too slowly. So you have to drift align very carefully in both altitude and azimuth several times until there is no dec drift as you go from horizon to meridian before you start worrying about your drive rate. Of course, it's possible that your drive rate is wrong. In this case I would check overtight meshing between worm and wheel.
Geoff

[rogerg (Roger)]

I have always found drift in RA has related to slightly off polar alignment. I have found it doesn't take much for there to be a drift in RA. I've often suspected something else, but in the end, it's always been polar alignment.