Well I finally managed to get back outside after what seems like a month of bad weather, poor sleep due to my youngest teething, car problems and colds & bugs.

The drive system has been adapted with a new shaft coupler.. I'm very pleased with this... all much tighter better algned etc.

Testing:

So of course it was a full moon. very very thin cloud and all planets too low, too dim or just not visible.. so where to point.. ah yes M42.

Well after a bit of aligning I stopped the stars drifting north or south and I got a chance to image with the lodestar.

a 240 second pic (one full rotation of the worm) produced star trails ~25 arc second long.. pretty goood, certainly much much better than with the old shaft coupler.

Tried taking lots (450) of 1 second images of the trapesium. Used IRIS to select the best 100 images and the deconvolved out a bit of the remaining noise got down to ~2 arc second FWHM.. not so great. Prboably due to living on a North-South road so I end up with my south view being churned up by the heating systems of the entire road.

Next: Hand controller communication then second axis then autoguider port.