New Astrotrac has jammed?

[Dinozorr]

Hi all, apart from 'my being new post' this is my real first post.

Unfortunately its a cry for advice/ help / suggestions!!

Last week I bought a new Astrotrac AG from a reputable retailer in the north.

Ive set the astrotrac up on a tripod and placed the camera on as you do. It's only a lumix gh3 so its nowhere near the max load weight.

I tested the astrotrac in doors just to see how close the two hour run time was against a timer. Spot on with in 4 seconds before the astrotrac stopped. Pretty good I thought!

I then pressed the rewind to base button and it started to rewind, it sounded a little rough then about a second or two later it just stopped and would not rewind.

I had to power down and power up several times to get it to rewind and back to base position????

Has anyone else had this problem? What have been the cures? Or do they need to be returned? £500 a lot to go wrong first time

Cheers for any advice.

[iksose7]

I used to own a Astrotrac and although i never had this problem, i was aware of it. Apparently you shouldn't let it run right to the end because of this problem. If i remember correctly leaving it to the end may cause something to jump off the long thread inside the AT. I used to rewind mine after 1hr30mins - 1hr45mins and never had any problems.

But if it keeps happening even when rewinding early then it may be faulty.

[glowjet]

If you are having those sort of problems, take it up with the supplier first, then return it. As you say £500 is a lot to pay, especially if does not sound to be running correctly, with intermittent return winding. Hope you get it sorted, as the unit on the whole has produced some excellent images with various cameras