Questions About CG5 Mount

[M4lcs67]

As I am a total newbie with this mount I have questions regarding it's set up as the instructions are a bit tricky to understand.

Firstly once I have the mount set up, the counterweights on, the ota attached and the whole thing balanced, you have to put the RA and DEC markers so they line up before you switch it onin order to calibrate it. At this point do you keep the clutches disengaged? I did do this on the scopes first outing, but I noticed that when I switched it on and started to slew to an object that the clutches had moved a little to engage. Is this normal. Is it a way of the mount self adjusting?

Also after I had set all the parameters into the hand controller to start an alignment including choosing a star to aim at, once I had hit the enter button the scope began to slew on its own. With my 127 SLT once you had hit the enter button you then had to slew manually to the object so that the onboard computer knew where you were going, so it could calculate it. Or perhaps I just need some more time with it in order to suss out it's features? There is no substitute for using it I suppose.

Thanks for any tips though

[Cornelius Varley]

1. The clutches need to be engaged for all slewing operations. If they are not the mount will not slew or tracking correctly.

2. With EQ goto mounts the mount has a known start point (home position). This is usually counterweight pointing down and telescope pointing at the north celestial pole. The handset now knows where the alignment stars are based on the start position, date, time and site location. The AZ goto mounts such as the SLT/Skywatcher don't have a home position, the first star is manually slewed to using the handset and the next alignment stars are slewed to automatically based on the location of the first star.

Peter

[M4lcs67]

Excellent Peter. Thanks for the info.