Dave Wilden

I have a second hand Az GTI mount which I'm really pleased with apart from one intermittant problem.    Very occasionally while it is slewing to a new position, it seems to lose power to the control unit, which causes it to stop transmitting a wifi signal, and hence the mount  loses control from the SynScan app.   When this happens the red light which normally blinks when its transmitting wifi goes out and the mount freezes at whatever position its in at that point - i.e the slewing stops.  If I move the scope manually in azimuth away from the position it froze in, the red light comes on again, and I can make it go out again just by moving it back slighly again.  The problem is that although I can reposition the tripod to avoid the problem position, I then have to go through the alignment process again.

I've had this problem occur 5 or 6 times over 6 months of use, but most of the time it seems to be fine and  I can slew the scope repeatedly through 360 in azimuth in either direction without it freezing.   But on the odd occasion it does happen, it seems to have a repeatable fault at a specific position as explained above.   I'm not sure if its always the same azimuth and elevation its happening at each time it occurs, as when I try to investigate it, I cant make it happen!!

BTW When the fault occurs, it doesnt matter  whether its running on external DC power or internal batteries, so its not a case of the DC  power jack failing to make consistent contact.    So I  suspect  its an internal problem - I am wondering if there any slip rings inside the unit which transmit the power to one or other of the stepper motors? And if so could these have a bad spot where the power is not  being transmitted through the slip ring?

I'd be interested to know if others have seen this problem, and if there's any solution, fix or  or work-round.

Dave