sidewind

Well it has been a few frustrating months. Mounts teasing me, working well during daytime, but at night ??? not so much. Then the other day, I was a good samaritan *lol*, when I helped another astronomer that was in a bin. He had to move from house to a flat at 3 floor, and now his rig was to big for him, so he adverticed for a swap to a smaller one. He wanted what I had, an ETX125PE and swapped that for a LXD75 with a 10" Schmidt-newton. He even gave up a Hyperion 5mm. Now I have a mount that runs, but I have gained another problem, backfocus, or lack of that when I use my 2" eyepieces. Well that's life, you win some, you loose some.

To night was the night, clear skies, I had the mount out, done what I should before dark. Powered on the mount, put in all info, and choose a 3 star alignment. Slewing to the first 2 stars, got them centered, and went on to the third, got it almost right (almost centered), and then the hand control freezed up, nothing to do other than try again, same result, after 4 tries, I choose a 1 star alignment, and for the next 3½ hour it just worked, Sirius, Jupiter, Andromeda, you name it, I got them more or less spot on. Darn, have to play tomorrow on dry runs, to see if it is a combo with the last alignment star, or if it is the routine of 3 star alignment that is faulty. Well, I didn't get the EQ5 updated, maybe I will just keep her with the old version.

Today I updated the handcontrol on my EQ5 & EQ6. Downloading the newest updates and updaters. After reading and rereading the instructions, I made a few dry runs before I jumped headlong into updating. EQ6 was a breese, went very fast. Then I tried to connect the h.c. and mount ...... disaster ...... "No link to mc. Stand alone mode" :eek: Tried several times to turn the mount on and off, same result. Hey Google is my friend here .... what I found was one thriller after another about h.c. or board meltdown. Now the sweat was pouring down my back. I dropped everything, walked away, made a pot of coffe, went outside with a cup of coffe and a few cigarettes, mulled it over for most of an hour. After a reread of the instructions, I found out that I could slow down the update, and presto, it worked ........ :grin: Tomorrow the EQ5 will get her update