Temperamental azimuth motor on Synscan AZ GoTo?

[Hermit]

Hi

I treated myself to a Synscan AZ GoTo mount for my Sywatcher Heritage 130p at the end of May, which I've only managed to use 3 times (1 of those times was in the house to test the motors!).

2 out of those 3 times, the azimuth motor has been temperamental. I'll press the left or right button and often nothing happens. The Up/Down buttons successfully result in the scope moving up or down every time. I disconnected the motor part from the mount, reattached, then sometimes the azimuth motor works and sometimes it doesn't (mostly, it doesn't...!).

This has happened again tonight during its 3rd use (the 2nd time I used the mount there were no problems, and I was outside with it for around 2 hours touring the night sky ).

Tonight, when I disconnected the motor from the mount I pressed the left/right buttons and the azimuth motor worked. When I put it back into the holder it stops. It was working at one point and it was on its way to point at Albireo when it just stopped before I got there and the handset display stated that it was still slewing towards it...

Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks

[Kolloth]

My AZ-Goto behaves a bit like this. The alt axis seems fine but the azimuth seems to be more temperamental.

It might be the power supply. Sometimes I run it off a 12v battery pack/jump started thing from Maplins and sometimes from a mains -> 12v 5A transformer.

Some nights it's fine some nights not so much. I've never bothered to correlate the two data sets but I might run some experiments.

Of course the engineer in me wants to take it apart and strip it down but must resist...

[Hermit]

Thanks for the reply Kolloth. I've contacted the retailer re a replacement as this is happening with the mains transformer (and if that was the cause I'd assume that it would impact the alt motor too(?)). I need a reliable GoTo mount for when I go to a star camp next month It seems to be related to the position of the motor part.

Before I send it back though it might be worth digging out my power tank and trying it with that... I can't remember whether it was ok with that before or not...

[Hermit]

Sent the mount back to OVL, who confirmed that there is a fault, and I should receive a replacement today. Happy days - T minus 2 weeks to Kielder !