Please Learn From My Set-Up Schoolboy Errors!

[PhotoGav]

I moved my mount (HEQ5) to a different corner of my garden yesterday to test the space as a location for a more permanent setup. What should have been a simple task to polar align and fire off a few subs turned into a hair pulling disaster... Please read and learn from my stupidity so that you may never waste time when setting up!

The first problem was when I tried to connect the laptop to the mount - Port Error. I had inadvertently connected the USB cable to a different USB socket on the laptop. The computer reinstalled the driver for the EQDir cable and that just doesn't work. I had to go through the whole tedious work around to install the old driver in Windows 10 that does work.

Lesson 1 - Always plug things back in the way they were installed!

Then the real test started. Happy that I could communicate with the mount, I set about Polar Alignment. EQMod Polar Align module first, followed by AlignMaster. EQMod worked perfectly and my daytime effort to point North was spot on, hurrah, Polaris was not far from the little circle and a few tweaks positioned it right in the middle. Then in to Alignmaster. Slew to first star and plate solve in SGP to get on target. Plate Solve failed miserably. What is normally a 10 second job whirred through 999 regions and failed, time after time. I searched online. I scratched my head. I tried again and again. I checked focus. I even tried to Blind Solve. Nothing would even vaguely work. I went inside and complained to my wife...

With renewed energy I went back outside and tried to solve an existing image of M101. Not even four seconds passed and the image was solved. Mmm, curious. I then looked at the mount and the telescope and thought that the slight misalignment in the DEC axis that I had noticed earlier in the evening, despite the DEC ring being at 0, should be investigated. I straightened up the scope and it was then that I realised that the DEC ring was not seated properly but twisted a few degrees off from its correct position. I put it back to its rightful place and screwed it down in place. The scope looked much squarer on to the mount. The first attempt at plate solving worked within about 10 seconds. Hurrah!

Lesson 2 - When setting up, if the telescope doesn't look square to the mount, it probably isn't and Plate Solving won't work because it is too far from the intended target and the hint passed to the solve engine is too far out. Doh!

 Here endeth the lesson.

 

[wimvb]

Lesson 3: When it ain't broke, don't fix move it

[PhotoGav]

52 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Lesson 3: When it ain't broke, don't fix move it

Ha ha ha! Quite...