Alignmaster alt/az step

[Daddystu]

I tried out alignmaster recently and like the simplicity however I had trouble with the alt/az step last night. My problem is when it slews away from the 2nd alignment star and asks you to adjust the azimuth bolts to recentre it. You'd think it would just slew itself away in the azimuthal direction however it also gives itself a little nudge in the alt direction. This means that I cannot possible bring the star back to centre using the azimuth bolts alone. I therefore I had to return to the tried and trusted EQMOD method instead. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm wondering if its some sort of backlash issue.

[Bizibilder]

It is working OK. When it slews to the second star it moves to exactly where the second star should be - with a perfectly aligned mount. You adjust in azimuth to get the "nearest you can". When you have done the first run (Alt and Az) click on repeat and the second (and possibly third) run will be progressivly nearer the "perfect" position. Normally two runs is sufficient. Hope that helps.

[Daddystu]

It is working OK. When it slews to the second star it moves to exactly where the second star should be - with a perfectly aligned mount. You adjust in azimuth to get the "nearest you can". When you have done the first run (Alt and Az) click on repeat and the second (and possibly third) run will be progressivly nearer the "perfect" position. Normally two runs is sufficient. Hope that helps.

Hi Roger that's not quite what I mean. The mount slewed to the first alignment star which I centred using eqmod, then slewed to the 2nd star which I again centred - no problems so far but its the next step where my problem occurs. The program is meant to slew the mount off the 2nd alignment star first in azimuth then altitude. The user must adjust each one in turn to recentre. Problem is the program is offsetting both at the same time whilst asking me to adjust just the one to re-centre.

[Bizibilder]

It could be that your mount is not on a dead level tripod or pier. Alignmaster must have a level mount to work from - as it is moving in Azimuth and Altitude these adjustments need to be precisely horizontal and vertical for the program to work correctly. This is one of the few times that an EQ mount must be set up dead level - normally it is only the polar axis that needs to be aligned.

EQMOD, for example, doesn't care about the orientation of the mount (ie the fixed portion) when doing its polar align routine - it is only the alignment of the polar axis that is being determined.

[Russe]

I've got the same problem and wrote to Matthias Gazarolli. Here his answer:

Hi,

can you check that the LMST is set correctly? Maybe it's a shift of the timezone setting (summertime/wintertime).

Can you check the geographical position.

Was the leveling of the mount good?

BR,

Matthias

[Russe]

Which confused me about the time in the left upper corner - it should show the exact time you have right now where you are, right?

[Daddystu]

I think I checked all 3 of those. However, if any I would suspect the first point in my case. I'll certainly have a good check of the time settings next time I fire it up. Have to say though EQMod on a permanent set-up is tough to beat in terms of time taken to align.