Hi and thank you for the reply. Very interesting things you said here, however something seems wrong.
Let's start with specs:
- EQ6R-Pro Mount (I haven't performed mechanical adjustments for backlash yet because the nature or my issue is definitely different, backlash doesn't seem to make your DEC drop to infinity basically)
- ASI120MM-Mini guide camera
- SkyWatcher 250PDS (I know it's a heavy telescope but again, other people still managed to achieve <0.5" total RMS constant guiding even with this setup, the problem is somewhere else)
- The mount is connected directly to my laptop (Asus) using a USB-B to USB-3 cable from the port of my mount, the power supply was recommended by the store and fits the specs of the mount. I am using NINA for slewing and plate-solving, PHD2 for guiding and Green Swamp Server as alternative for EQMOD.
Now, to your points:
"The mount is reporting RA and Dec position, but no mount driver" - seems to be an error because I have a mount driver. I have installed latest Ascom Platform Driver and the mount was instantly detected by both GSS and PHD2 using the new profile wizard. The guiding speed in PHD2 was automatically set to 0.9 after the mount was detected.
"1. You were pointing at Az = 256.8 deg when you Calibrated. Near south is recommended Az = 180 deg. Unless you're in the southern hemisphere ?" - I am in the northern hemisphere and slewed to Betelgeuse (which was very close to the intersection of Meridian with Equator. I have absolutely no idea ehy that az value of 256.8 was logged. Unless somehow PHD2 calibrated after I slewed to Bode's Galaxy (with apparent meridian flip) :-? I am really not sure about this.
"2. You don't appear to have cleared Dec backlash before Calibrating, by pulsing north until you saw the guidestar actually start to move." - This actually I have no idea how to do. The mount's backlash was never adjusted and I am reluctant to do that unless absolute necessary because stores in my country are very picky about warranty. If you are speaking of a software backlash compenstation or something similar, I am new to this and really don't know how.
"3. Your Cal had a noticeable Orthogonality Error that wasn't reported, because you had "Assume orthogonal axes = yes"." - Here again I don't understand again.
"4. Your Guide Rates are very low, RA Guide Speed = 4.5 a-s/s, Dec Guide Speed = 4.5 a-s/s," - Seems to be another error, PHD2 automatically selected guide speed of 0.9 and GSS has both RA Guiding Rate and Dec Guiding Rate to 90%, although I also see here some "Minimum Dec Pulse" and "Minimum Ra Pulse" both set to 20. I don't know what these are. The location settings in GSS are accurate.
"5. Your exposure was 5 seconds, which is very slow. What did the Guide Assistant recommend ?" - Another possible error, PHD2 is set on 2s exposures, I have opened my guiding assistant results after calibration and confirm 2s exposures was selected. The assistant does indicate a large declination backlash and recommended me to set "RA min-move" to 0.13 and "Dec min-move" to 0.20 and recommended that I might need to guide in one dec direction.
So in conclusin there are some things that I don't really understand, why the calibration position from the log is not near meridian where I phisically calibrated (using a slew and center from NINA on Betlegeuse), why the driver doens't seem to be recognised and logged guiding speeds are different than what I set up. I don't really know what to do next.