Carpo

This is a couple of weeks old now, but I wanted to give some feedback on how I resolved the alignment issue. To recap, my Meade LX200 10" (Classic but with the George Dudash upgrade) wasn't aligning properly even although I had followed all the familiar steps and checks. The final straw was last night when it selected firstly Capella, and then Rigel as the first choice "easy" method alignment stars. I might have believed that in November, but right now they are below my horizon . I decided to try the "reset" option, and re-entered all the necessary date (a real pain, got to be extra careful!). Anyway, bingo! it chose Arcturus then Altair for alignment, and the second one, Altair, was almost on the middle of the Telrad centre circle, with minimal final adjustment needed. I've never had it as close as that before and I'm wondering if over a period of time, there might be a drifting of settings which might benefit from the reset option every year or so. So, problem solved, and I had (eventually) a fruitful hour or so revisiting M5, M27 and a few NGC/IC nebulae. Thanks once again for all the advice and comments!

Just to answer a few of the questions, the scope has not got the gps module, so I input that manually. Only needed to do that the first time as it is always based at our house. It has the George Dudash upgrade panel with integral time/date module. I purchased and installed this myself some few years ago after the original pc boards developed the well known LX200 capacitor faults. The date format is not the problem, I have to enter it as June, not 06 so no confusion with dd/mm or mm/dd. I wasn't able to check it out last night, hopefully this evening after the forecast thunderstorms have passed (Northern France). I did check out the time accuracy and it has held to the second against my mobile phone, so fingers crossed!

Many thanks for the responses. That confirms how I've been operating. I'll have another go tonight. When I checked the date and time last night, both were out by quite a margin, (4 days, 6 hours) so I thought the CR2032 battery would be low. When I checked, it was still over 3v, so that one is a mystery. I changed it anyway so that will be one further step forward. I last used the scope at end of March and everything was fine on the alignment side. I'll try the two star alignment tonight, with Polaris and Vega. There's a problem when I use "Easy Align" since the first star, Arcturus, is hidden by trees.

Help please, newbie here. I've a Meade 10" LX200, with an Autostar controller. I'm in France which, like UK, has daylight savings during winter. So when it calls for "Daylight Savings Time", do I have to put "NO" in the summer and "YES" in the winter? or do I leave it as "YES" and presume the scope will work things out based on the integral clock and date? The reason I ask is I'm having trouble with my initial alignment and want to check all the possible issues. Many thanks!

Just received my Telrad dew controller from www.dewcontrol.com The bonus was no extra Brexit charges for delivery here in France. A very simple device, but one which will be essential. Many viewing evenings have had to be terminated with heavy dew on the finder glass. I often use the "high precision" mode on my Meade (George Dudash upgrade) which means centering a star close to the object every time, so a clear finder glass is a "must". I'm tempted by the objective lens heater straps, but I must say my home made dew protector works very well and gives me at least 2 hours without problems. It is a roll of 60cm (2ft) wide exercise mat cut and taped to form a tube which fits snugly onto the end of the scope.