Zakalwe

To be fair Olly, the OP damaged the thread through his own lack of mechanical skills (see his other thread). Further damage was caused by incorrectly dissasembling it. You could hardly claim that a BMW was poorly built if an owner decided to adjust the engine without much in the way of skills, and then tried to fix it with no workshop manual and cobbled-together tools.

No offence to the OP.....personally I would have sent it to someone like Graham at Astrotec. He knows what he is doing and is geared up to fix things properly.

FLO had better make sure that the site is bang-on accurate, or they'll be getting a visit :grin:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/12/kim-jong-weather-north-korea

Itd probably die from overuse.....

Don't worry Stephen, we have the perfect solution 

Steve

LOL. Ill have two please!

Hmmm...this is the forecast for my location:

100% clear skies

And this is the reality from Sat24:

I'm in the red square.

:clouds1:

it sure ain't easy this forecasting malarkey!

A few people have asked for this and it is something we will add at some point - for the moment we didn't want to require people to register to use the site so instead, when you request a forecast, the URL of the page will change. If you then bookmark this URL it will take you back to that locations forecast everytime.

Cheers,

Grant

Thanks Grant.  Can the location not be stored in a cookie?

Nice idea!

Can you include a way to store locations so I don't have to input my location every time?

Absolutely amazing.

Connect it via a powered hub. I find that it fails evertime when connected to a USB port on the pc or laptop. If I use a powered hub then it works perfectly.

Why did you re-sync the encoders when you went into EQMOD? If you parked with the handset then the mount will mark where it's pointed. EQMOD will then pick this up. You should only need to resync if you have moved (manually) the mount when it was parked. Or if you've fitted something like a side-by-side bar.

Try deleting the EQMOD.ini file and restarting EQASCOM.

There was a similar issue reported on the Yahoo group and it was a corrupt EQMOD.ini file.

You won't find a wind-turbine held down with those ... 

I wouldn't recommend through-bolts or rawl-bolts into small concrete pads as they exert a very large sideways force when tightened down and can easily burst concrete , especially "home-mixed" material that is generally less consistent or strong as commercial .

I'd agree with this. Rawlbolts are OK but there is a lot that can go wrong with them. Splitting the pier pad is very possible, especially if you are near the edge of the block.

The chem-fixers are the easiest to use, to be honest. Just make sure that the holes are properly brushed and blown out (wear eye protection). If the bore is dusty then the chemical resin can't adhere to it's best to the concrete.

Wickes do it. From memory I think that a small cartridge is about £15. It comes complete with a screw-in plunger (so you don't need an external cartridge gun) and a couple of mixing nozzles.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/invt/243796/

Very true. Every manufacturer will calculate the Cost of Quality. Some, like Takahashi, LZOS and other high end manufacturers will think nothing of scrapping an entire run if it fails their high standards. This is how they build their reputation for super high quality. The downside of this is cost, and limited supply. Cheap, high availability, low failure rate, high precision- these are all competing factors and in some cases mutually exclusive.

I'm not known for being the voice of reason, but here goes. The EQ8 is a mass produced unit, not a hand built Mega expensive unit. In any mass production run there is a failure rate, which will be balanced against the cost of decreasing the failure rate. Now whilst, from a PR point of view, sending a poor mount to a guy that is well known in the community and that will use the mount in a commercial environment, was a bad move, it probably reflects the nature of the selling model (stack 'em high....).

Unless these mounts start failing all over the place, then, probably, these should be dealt with in the normal way that any failure of a mass produced item would be dealt with-replace the unit.

Its regrettable (especially from a PR point of view) and it is extremely annoying to be on the receiving end of it. I'm sure that FLO will sort the job out.

The UK distro is pretty well known. ...its Optical Vision Ltd

There may be some internal cabling that mustn't get wound round too many times! Or maybe the encoders get confused of you exceed a full turn.

Olly

Hi Olly

I can't see any reference in the manual. If it was an anti-cable wrap thing then it wouldn't sent the axis off in the same direction surely?

I will try give it a try around the full rev of the dec worm tonight,   I dont recall seeig any blanked off holes in the dec housing, need to check this.

Mark

You need to check it at various points along the rotation.

one thing that I noticed with mine is that if you do a couple of full 360 slews in DEC the handset reports "Slew limits exceeded" and then rotates the DEC through another 360⁰. I have no idea what thats all about?

Well, I'm trying some planetary imaging on Jupiter. I don't hold much hope as its windy as heck here.

The tracking seems good though....I synched on Jupe and then had to slew away at speed to close the roof when the rain came. 5 mins later i told CdC to slew back to Jupe and it was bang on target. On a Chameleon chip (8mm) at 7 metres focal length (C11 with PowerMate 2.5) :smiley:

How did you do this measurement with the handset? I can see how to do with a guidescope calibration. If you let me know I'll give it a go. 

Olly

Hi Olly,

I powered up the mount, entered the date and time as normal and unparked. I then went to Utility Func. >Show Position. You can select RA/DEC, Alt/Az or Axis 1 & 2 readouts by pressing the selection arrows (not the 4-way directional arrows). I slewed to various points around the DEC axis and watched the readout as I pushed and pulled on the dovetail. This will also show if the movement is in RA or DEC. Obviously, this method is pretty crude and is only as accurate as the resolution of the encoders, but it does give a way of measuring the backlash.

Rgds

Steve J

Ive had a play with mine (seeing that there's near constant cloud and rain hhere there's little else to do!). Am pleased to report that mine seems to be OK. With a 15" dovetail in the saddle (all overhang to one side) there is a tiny amount of backlash that can be felt. I'm talking about way less than 0.5mm as measured at the end of the dovetail. This is consistant right through the DEC rotation. Using the handest to measure the backlash it comes in at roughly 1-1.5 arc minute. I don't have enough experience to deem this acceptable or not. It feels OK to me, but what says you?

This thread suggests that the author has a PDF detailing the routine to adjust backlash:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/200569-eq8/

The clutches (at least on mine) wil barely hold the mouht in RA. Tighten the clutch and then lift the lever and reposition it to allow further tightening. Rinse and repeat.

Mine needs a couple of goes like this to get it fully cinched up. This might cure your backlash issue

At last I've managed to win an auction

An auction sniper is your friend. Goofbid always works for me

http://www.goofbid.com/

I checked the sensor frame and cold finger and it was barely warm to the touch.

This photo shows the sensor assembly and cold finger placed on a 5mm thick aluminium plate. The heat treatment was on the cover glass at the top and towards the left. I started with the top right corner (as in the pic) and then from the corner towards the left. The unit was arranged to show the change in the bond to it's best - in the sunshine.

Could you not run the Peltier to keep the sensor cold. whilst applying heat to break the bond? Having the sensor cold might even help to break the bond more quickly??

Would it be possible to make some sort of protective "screen" that could be clamped over the sensor to shield these wires from damage?