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Geordie mc

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  1. Hi. Further to my above post, I found a great video on Graham’s Astronomy Channel on YouTube that showed the strip down procedure. Did my mount last night so just need a clear night to see if things have improved. I leaned all the old grease off and regressed everything with a light lithium grease. Fingers crossed. I know I’ll need to spend some time tweaking the backlash out of each axis but hoping I’ll get better guiding now. If you are an owner of the same mount I can confirm that the strip down is very straight forward and worth doing if you think your mount is a bit stiff. If I can do it anyone can!
  2. Hi everyone. My Sky-Watcher AZEQ6 GT mount, which is about 6 years old, seems to be giving me a few issues this season. The RA and Dec axes seem stiff making balance hard to get accurate and guiding isn’t as good as I used to get. I think it needs a service. I’m in South West France though so no idea where I could get this done. Does anyone know where I can get a technical manual for the mount or a good step by step online guide/video so I can do it myself? I’ve tried google and YouTube but not found anything that helps much so far. Better still would be somewhere I could get it done professionally or by someone who has experience. Happy to travel a few hundred Km or could ship if cost wasn’t too much due to weight! Any pointers much appreciated. Thank you.
  3. Thanks. I was using the same power supply as before which gave no issues. Justgone and got another one to try and it may have solved things. No idea why the old supply wasn’t doing its job. Just need to load up the scope etc and retry. Fingers crossed it works. Huge thanks for the help.
  4. Just an update in case it helps others. I found an old driver (not on theQSI site) version 1.0.0.0.4 which works. Really think Atik need to support theQSI cameras more. I’d be happy to test drivers if they need beta testers. I love the camera and although it’s over 10 years old it still performs really well. When users have paid over £3500 for a product i think they're entitled to ongoing support. How about producing a native driver that works in N,I,N,A? That would be great.
  5. Hi everyone. My AZEQ6 mount has started having an issue when slewing. If I slew in R.A. it’s fine. A If Islew in Dec it’s fine. But if I try R.A. and Dec together get an awe full noise and one axis stops moving. If I start with R.A. and then start the Dec the R.A. stops. If I start in Dec and then add R.A. the Dec stops. It does it even when the mount has no load on it. I’ve tried adjusting the backlash on each axis but it’s still doing it. Any advice on addressing this would be very much appreciated. The mount is about 6 years old and worked fine last season. Thank you.
  6. Hi all. Ive just got a new mini PC and I'm having issues installing my QSI660WSG-8 CCD to use in N.I.N.A. Its a Windows 11 Pro PC. I got the latest driver from the QSI website. The camera loads ok but when i choose the filterwheel it only has 5 filters rather than 8 (I have set all 8 slots up in the tab on the QSI camera driver) and I get an error message about not being able to read filter offsets as its not enabled in the driver followed bu a success message but it isnt successful! I recall having issues on Windows 10 laptop and had to install an older driver to get things working, but I cant remember which driver or where I got it from. If anyone has any suggestions on tackling this I would be very grateful. Thank you.
  7. Hi David. Thanks for the response. Unfortunately I’m not getting a V curve to show you. I’ve popped in the last successful run, which wasn’t perfect and why I started trying Hokus Focus. The second shot shows my curve for my TSQ65 scope where I always get a very nice parabolic curve and great HFR. The focus moves out and I get an HFR for the first exposure. The value depends on my step size but was around 5 - 7. The focus motor moves and I gets value about 2 points lower. Then the third gives a value a point lower against the curve is looking okay and in line with what I get with other scopes. Then when it moves again it says there’s not enough change in the HFR or I’m too far out of focus. It’s clearly not the latter as focus is improving at that point. As for the HFR, I wouldn’t expect much change as it nears the bottom of the curve and it’s always succeeded on other scopes - it even worked on this setup until I tried to improve things with the Hokus Pokus plugin. It’s as though this has done something to the requirements for a successful run which has stayed in place after removing the plugin. im wondering if it’s a star trail issue as I’m at 1400mm and guiding stops as I use an OAG. I did notice slight trails in the focus subs even at just 3 second exposures. I’m going to do the Pec training for my mount tonight and try an autofocus run near the pole with 2 second exposures. I might try leaving guiding on as well and lowering the step size so PHD2 can keep up. I don’t really know why I’m getting trails with very short exposures. My mount is Ona pier. I’ve checked the PA twice and I’m only a couple of seconds off perfect. The mount seems balanced. I can only think that it’s a power issue - this is my heaviest setup on my AZEQ6GT - and I use a large power tank which maybe hasn’t enough grunt, or it’s a PEC issue. I’ll take some shots of the run in progress tonight if I can’t get things sorted and report back. Thanks again. John i
  8. Hi. My autofocus runs with an EAF on an Edge 800 kept failing last night. I kept getting a message saying the change in HFR value was not sufficient and that either my step size was too low or stars were too far out of focus. This started after I installed the Hokus Focus plug in. I tried increasing the step size with no success. I uninstalled Hokus Focus and still no luck. Can anyone with a similar setup give me some suggestions on setting they use successfully in N.I.n.a. please? I spent 3 hours trying everything I could think of to solve this, including different backlash, step size, number of exposures per point, outer crop ratio, etc. if I decide to reinstall N.I.n.a. Is there a way to save all my configurations. I use 3 scopes and 2 cameras etc and don’t really want to set everything else up again. any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
  9. Ha, well spotted! Date fixed now. If only my camera was🙁
  10. Hi Steve. Thanks for your considered reply (and fixing the text- I typed it in Pages and thought it could be copied easily. I was wrong!) It’s certainly not meant to start arguments or bash a dealer. I’m simply recounting my poor experiences withZWO. If I thought it was just me, I would have let it go, but the issue with the Asi120mm affected everyone who bought the camera. Isuspect that is quite a large number. I thought it was something I was doing wrong and it was only in looking for a solution that I discovered the fault lay with the way ZWO had implemented the USB port on the camera. They have simply left hundreds if not thousands of customers with expensive paperweights! I would have thought that the least they could have done was ask for cameras to be returned and then the issue fixed. I would have paid a small fee for this service and informed them of this but they were extremely unhelpful. They see their ridiculous voucher offer as the solution. It’s not a late night rant. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought for a week and finally thought I’d post my experience so that others can read and make up their own mind whether or not to use ZWO. I have been a forum member for over 10 years and enjoy the discussions and help on here very much. I certainly don’t want to cause trouble or upset people. Thank you for allowing my post. Can I take this opportunity to thank you and other forum moderators for your work and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2022. Ckear Skies John
  11. I have decided to boycott ZWO. Their poor quality control and appalling customer service over the last few years mean I have had enough. First there was my Asi120mm. This stopped working when I upgraded my laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I’m not alone. ZWO said it was an old camera and no longer supported. It was 3 years old when this happened! The reason it did not work is that ZWO did not stick to the USB2.0 standards in order to get faster frame rates. It doesn’t even work with their own ASIAir! Then they said there was a firmware update to try. It didn’t work. Then they said they had come up with a solution and that it would be done by the end of the year. The “solution” was to offer an $80 voucher if I spent more than $249 with them and could produce my proof of purchase. I’ve already replaced the asi120mm. How does this help? Next there’s my asi1600mm-cool. This still works but I’ve had to replace the cooling fan which failed. ASIAir pro. Terrible WiFi range of about 3m so I had to buy a WiFi extender. Most users I know did the same or had an external aerial fitted. The new Plus model has the aerial but I know 3 people who’ve had units arrive DOA and a further couple who’ve had the power board fail within a few weeks. Then they wait for replacements which currently takes a few months. Poor quality control or poor components? Either way it’s not good. Their first generation filters had reflection issues. Version 2 addressed this but that does not help those who bought the originals. It seems to me that ZWO has a strategy of rushing cheap products to market and letting their customers act as beta testers. Their customer support, in my experience, is polite but doesn’t actually help you. They fob you off with excuses and delays hoping, I believe, that you’ll give up and go away. I believe they are launching a mount. How many issues will that have. I’d avoid early adoption if I were you. I realise that this will not be true for most people. If you have ZWO products that serve you well,great. I hope it continues. My EAF is working fine, but for me this has been the exception not the rule. ZWO have one plus point - they are cheaper than the competition. But this is changing with others such as Altair Astro, QHY and Atik catching up. There are great mini PCs that rival the ASIAir plus. Yes they are more tricky to set up but they run NINA and PHD2, SharpCap etc and offer far more flexibility and better performance. You can pick one up cheaper than the ASIAir plus and add a Pegasus pocket power box for a much more powerful setup. Am I a grumpy old git? Yes! I probably am but I think I have good cause. Will my boycott have any impact on ZWO? No it won’t but it’ll make me feel better and hopefully it may make a few other people think twice before jumping on the ZWO gravy train. There are other options. Please consider them. Support your own country’s manufacturing if you can or at least a company with UK/European/North American customer support that listens. Starlight Express have always been brilliant for me in this regard. If just a few people do this and get better products or service as a result it will have made my post worthwhile. Clear skies everyone and if you’ve read this right to the end - thank you.
  12. Thanks everyone. I’ll pass on the info. I really hope she doesn’t buy it. Her nephew is 10 and I think it’ll discourage him.
  13. Thank you. The chap selling it said it was a 200p but I must admit I had a 200PDS which looked very different. Thanks for the mount info too. The lady asking me wants it for her nephew but I have big reservations. I think I’ll tell her to give it a miss. Much appreciated. John
  14. Hi. A friend has been offered a Skywatcher 200p on this mount. The mount looks a bit too small for it I think but I don’t recognise it. Anyone know what it is and if it would cope with the 200P? Thanks.
  15. Thanks for that info Tony. Olly does know his stuff so ill look into his methods. I tried without a filter last night but could only take very short exposures due to the Moon. Couldn't really see a difference, but it was great seeing so I tried to collimate again using the usual defocus method and it looked slightly off. A bit of adjustment led to an improvement. I was using the ASIair pro and forgot to save the images though. I think I'll retry using APT as it has the collimation aid. Its really hard to judge by eye if you've got things dead centre so this might help. Might try an artificial star too. It was tough adjusting the Hyperstar in sub-zero temperatures! It also means i can do it regardless of the weather - no clear nights for the next 10 days sadly. Hoping that with a very careful collimation I might not need to do anything else but ill certainly look into the tilt as well. Thanks very much for the support on this. I'll post again when Ive hopefully made good progress. Have a great Christmas and best wishes for 2022. Regards, John
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