Heq5 with synscan upgrade - First light

[long_arms]

Hello, 

After a fiasco getting the old brass gears off my mount, I was relieved to complete the upgrade. It was quite frustrating plugging in all the little cables, Definitely requires a steadier hand than mine.  

Had my first light tonight though   

I updated the firmware of the synscan controller (after getting a serial to usb adapter from Maplin). Was very quick and worked fine. 

I've never used (even seen  ) a mount with synscan or goto before but read the instructions and got going. 
I selected three star alignment to start with and the first slew was miles away from vega, but the alignment went fine. 

I updated the firmware specifically for the polar align function, I'd read mixed reviews of it but I would just like to say that it worked well!  
Was a little strange adjusting the bolts whilst looking through the finder and the eyepiece, but after a couple of alignments the errors were getting smaller and smaller!

I can't comment too much on how accurate it really was as I've just been observing tonight. But I was just looking at Jupiter with a 5mm eyepiece, left it for 15 minutes and its still in view! 

Initial thoughts:
For someone that has absolutely no experience with synscan, I found it a doddle even the polar align utility. 
But...for observing, I found goto a little strange. I feel like I want to undo the clutches, look through the telrad and just swing the scope around myself. I however can see the massive advantage it has when it comes to imaging. 
Not a fan of having to run the extension lead outside to power it (minor annoyance). I'll have to make a leisure battery/power pack one day  . 

Also noticed theres a fair delay in the dec axis, a good few seconds before anything happens (is this backlash?) It was there before but definitely worse now. Think that will need adjusting. 

Couldn't get eqmod working through the serial cable and the handset. Not sure why, the COM port was 6 but eqmod wasn't finding it   
Hopefully when my eqdir comes, the connection won't be an issue. 

Basically I'm very happy with it, and whilst my upgrade didn't go smoothly it almost definitely was a freak mount with burrs on the worm shafts. 

Just my 2 cents   

Dan


 

[jambouk]

Nice write up.

Yes that sounds like backlash, in my understanding of backlash. Is there any play in either axis (mainly dec if that is where you are noticing problems) when the clutch is locked tight, can you get any movement around the dec axis as you rotate the saddle? If so you can probably tighten things up and reduce the backlash a bit (i think this is discussed on astrobabys pages). There is an option on the handset to set how much backlash you have so it tells to the motors to turn that amount before it knows it will be turning the scope (but i've never used this); a few pages on here about working out how much backlash you have for that option.

James