AS CG5-GT Handset Guide Rate question if i may

[Ewan]

Right having read the unclear manual & seen various bits of info on the wider web i am now posting this here hoping someone will know, my question may apply to a similar mount as well.

I have read that the Autoguide rate in the MOUNTS handset may need changing for PHD to work efficently, in the Scope Setup menu there is an Autoguide Rate sub menu, once in there you can set the guide rate as a % of Sidreal rate, what should this be ?  the default setting is 50%.

I have read 'What to do When PHD Guiding isn't Push Here Dummy' by Craig Stark & he sais this :-

'Remember, PHD is looking to have the star move by 5% of the screen size. Did you change guide scopes to something of a shorter focal length? If so, it's going to take longer to get the star to move that much. Likewise, are you imaging nearer the celestial pole? If so, it will take longer guide pulses to get the mount to move. Odds are that under these circumstances, increasing the "calibration step size" in the advanced panel will clear things up. This will lengthen the duration of each pulse during calibration to get more motion out of each step.

One last note here is to check your guide rate in your mount's controller. When you're guiding by hand, a 0.5x rate may be nice (which amounts to the mount tracking at 0.5x or 1.5x). You're not helping PHD any by this and you're just increasing the calibration time and correction time by using anything other than full-speed tracking (1x).'

Now i presume by 'Full Speed' Craig means to set the guide rate to 100% ?  the handset will only accept 90% as maximum so what am i meant to set this to ?

I have been going round in circles so far, there is plenty of advice about balancing slightly heavy East (could someone simplify this for me, weight further down the shaft ?), i don't keep it perfectly balanced as i read this is counter productive which makes sense.

The mounts no where near overloaded either, i had 00:00:00 on my PA display which i can do now 95% of the time.

The last time i was guiding the Dec graph all of a sudden nosedived downwards after a few mins, i restarted & it did it again about 2 mins in, this is the first time i have had this happen, i was using PHD2 beta btw.

2 weeks ago after reinstalling PHD2 & leaving everything at default i guided for 10 mins so i am getting a little frustrated.

My AA frac is 80mm @ 480Fl, finder guider is AA 10 x 60 @ 225Fl, Guidecam is the DMK""618.

Is the guide cam good (i believe it is) ?, is the finder Fl too short ? (maybe, i have read a barlow can be used to increase FL ) or all just down to flexure & buy an OAG @ 9mm anyway & be done with it.

If anyone can help me i would much appreciate it.