wvrfish

22 hours ago, SirLancelot4711 said:

By the way, update on this: I did eventually get a replacement. Long cloudy spell prevented me from properly playing around with it earlier but I did so the last few days and wanted to check a few things with you guys (going from low to high in terms of how concerned I am about them).

1. After polar alignment, when I used the GOTO function on the first SA GTI to align to my first star, it generally went more or less into the right position and I only had to finetune, which was great. This one however goes completely off and I have to move it significantly to put into the right direction. Once the first star is aligned, the rest works. Was I just lucky with the first few times and is it typical that the first alignment is totally off?
2. After doing a 3 star alignment, I tried to focus on Andromeda, but the app told me it's out of reach, despite being right above me. Has anyone experienced this? It did find other stars correctly so I would have presumed that my alignment was correct. Location and time were also correctly set.

Did you experience any of the above and have any advice?

On point 2., you probably need to increase the altitude limit in the SynScan Pro app, under Settings->Altitude Limit. I think it defaults to 75 degrees.

15 hours ago, Clarkey said:

Don't sweat it. It's not as hard as it is hyped up to be.

What method would you recommend? Feels like I've read dozens of subtly different approaches, but I think it was David Davies(?) that sounded most logical to me. I also don't fancy spending hundreds on a Howie Glatter

Thanks

I recently had this same problem myself. I tightened the pressure screw (on the bottom) quite a bit and it helped but I found it would still slip when moving inwards whilst pointing near to the zenith.

I was looking at getting either the R&P TS focuser or a Baader steeltrack, but thought I would give fixing it one more go.

I realised that it was actually the fine focus knob/mechanism that was slipping in my case - it would still move if I used the coarse focus knobs. I tried tightening the grub screw on the fine focus knob itself but that didn't help. I then dismantled it again and tightened a nut on the fine focus gearing a little and reassembled.

The nut in question can be seen on https://agenaastro.com/articles/guides/optimizing-your-gso-crayford-focuser.html, step 7. The focuser in that guide is slightly different to mine but the fine focus looked the same.

Once re-assembled I found that the operation of the focuser overall was a bit stiffer and less smooth, but the slipping issue was resolved. I was concerned that my cheap little 28BYJ-48 based DIY electronic focuser wouldn't have enough torque to move it, but it's been working just fine.

Now I just need to sort the collimation 🤦‍♂️

Sorry to resurrect this thread again... but I had a question about fixing a flanged pier down:

How do you ensure the pier sits plumb when bolting it down? In my limited experience with concrete, it is never particularly level nor flat.

Or do you not worry to much about it and rely on the top plate to get a level surface for the mount?

Thanks

I too now use it as my only form of noise reduction. I've also never touched the Detail slider (think it defaults to 0.15?). 

I normally do a NoiseXTerminator pass immediately after background extraction, and sometimes an additional pass on the non-linear data when fully combined.

Still using deconvolution for sharpening. I was a bit put off of other methods, I think after reading a post by the developer of Pixinsight arguing that they were a bit un-natural.

4 hours ago, Elp said:

Quite good, what FL are you shooting at?

It has only been at 250mm (SW Evoguide 50ED) to be fair.

Next clear night I plan to put my 72/432mm refractor on there which will probably be quite close to the 5kg payload rating. Hoping the performance won’t suffer too much. 

I’ve been very happy with my SA GTi. I’ve used it perhaps 10 times so far (left running all night) with no major issues.

I have noticed I end up with more bad subs than with my HEQ5, though that might be the slightly ropey tripod I’m using shifting slightly, also the conditions haven’t been great. Still probably only lose 1 in 10 or 15 3 minute subs, which I find acceptable.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think on reflection a roll-off roof might be simpler and easier to build!

Does anyone know of any companies that manufacture very small domes (~1-1.5m diameter)? It would be to install on the top of an existing log cabin. 

Thanks

I used to use a 2" filter wheel with my DSLR before which worked fine.

I've since moved to a ASI 1600MM with 1.25" filter wheel. It's supposed to get the filter close enough to avoid vignetting but I haven't found that to be the case. Vignetting is mostly removed with flats though.

I think the 294MC sensor is marginally bigger than the 1600MM so would expect similar vignetting (and removal)

I recently acquired a StellaLyra 8" RC (1600mm focal length) to complement my Horizon 72ED. Very pleased with it so far, and found guiding to work well with a ~230mm guidescope. I thought I might need to switch to OAG but not found it to be necessary.

I should probably mention that my HEQ5 has had the belt mod so that may have helped as the 8" RC is probably at the top tend of the mount capacity.

I must admit I'm now contemplating getting something with a FL of around 8-900mm so I've got all bases covered!

I assume it's not just me, but there seems to be a hard stop at about +/- 95 degrees from home on the RA axis.

Does anyone know what EQMOD will do if you tried to slew beyond that? Does the SynScan app have these limits already programmed (I know it had an altitude limit by default)?

Thanks 

Sorry Malcolm, didn't see your reply - but yes it was indeed a pain to find one, now I know why. 

In the end I got a single part from ebay for £5 + postage. It was supposedly coming from the UK, but took a while to arrive. Once soldered on though, I was very pleased to discover my HEQ5 had come back to life!

No idea of what caused it to blow originally (not very knowledgeable with electronics), possibly the cheap 15V power supply I was using.

Not to worry, I think I've identified it 🤞

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but it seemed like the best place to post this. My HEQ5 decided to pack in a couple of nights ago (No response/both axes error). I've got a new motherboard on order but decided to dismantle the mount tonight and found what I suspect is the problem.

A component (transistor I presume) seems to have blown in the Q3 position. I seem to have the rev C version. By any chance, is anybody able to identify the part so that I might attempt a repair before doing the full motherboard replacement.

Many thanks

Adam