miscat

Indeed Skywatcher confirm that it does just use the RA axis as if it were a dumb mount. They could tweak the DEC axis but have evidently decided to make the user do an accurate polar alignment. Issue closed!

Something / things about the mount don't seem to make sense. I expect that in alt az mode when tracking that both axes will be working to keep the object centered (depending on where in the sky). I expect that in eq mode, with a wedge and imperfect polar alignment, that having told the system that the alignment stars are not where it thought they were that it would have to use both axes to keep an object centered. What I find, and you can do this in your living room, is if you align on a star and tell it that it is way out and then look at how the axes are moving it's only the RA axis that's moving. It's always like that. In practice, with stars, if I align on 3 stars with imperfect polar alignment then the system goes to stars really well (oddly misses things like the moon!). The stars are centered but the stars trail because only one axis is being used. This makes no sense! It is demonstrating that it knows how it is orientated relative to the sky but doesn't use that info to track. The upshot is that the tracking ability seems to be dependent on a good poplar alignment, despite it being able to demonstrate that it doesn't need that. It's really odd. Is it really odd?