Skywatcher EQ5 motors

[GrantR]

Hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this one for me! I've just got my first telescope, a Skywatcher Explorer 200P on an EQ5 mount. I've also bought and managed to fit the otional dual motordrive kit with no real problems. The mount is moving fine with the controller but the manual says to track all buttons need to be pressed. Indeed this seems the case, with all 4 buttons pressed the RA motor does move and the scope seems to track. What I can't get though, is surely I don't have to keep the buttons pressed to keep the scope tracking do I? As soon as I let go, it stops, can it be set to track and then left without having to keep fingers on the buttons?

[Hobbes]

On my EQ5 Dual Motor hand controller there are 2 switches at the top of the controller front panel. The left hand one is the tracking switch which has three positions - Northern or Southern hemisphere or Off. When this is set to either the northern or southern hemisphere setting the green light on the controller lights up and the mount tracks in the appropriate direction.

The right hand switch sets the slewing speed of the handset from 2x up to 8x.

The 4 directional buttons are only used to slew the mount not track.

Hope this helps

[GrantR]

Cheers, that makes sense. I've been switching it to N then using the buttons so if I just switch to N it should track? I've clearly been over thinking it and not looking close enough at what the controller is doing! Thanks again!

[Viv]

Grant - i had them & thought exactly the same.

No, as soon as power is on it starts tracking. I thought it wasn't moving, but in daylight, put in on & look at the cogs - they will be moving.

If not, check the grub screws, they have to be fairly tight, so the cogs mesh ok & turn.

[GrantR]

It's good to know, I'm having enough issues trying to get to grips with everything else! Trying to work out how I was going to keep 4 buttons pressed and get the camera setup was just too much to contemplate.

[coxy322]

I have recently added a dual motor to my EQ5. Sometimes if the balance is not quite right then the motor does either move too quickly or not quick enough.

You need to put everything on your scope (camera etc) and spend a few minutes getting the balance on both axis perfect. Then when tracking objects you can slightly adjust the weights to counteract any speed issues on the RA movement.

These things are 'cheap' - so dont expect it to be perfect...

How long do the batteries last, anybody know?