SkyPortal confusion

[AaronL]

Hi all,

I have been lucky enough to have been purchased an 8SE for my birthday. Shameful to admit but this was 2 years ago and my competence has not increased much. Partly because I don't get a lot of time to play!

Every now and then, I take the scope out in earnest for some star based escapism. The trouble is, my lack of scope skills means that I dont escape very far!

I have never got on with the hand control of the 8SE. I have watched a lot of videos and read the instructions and the three star align process fails me most times. I read a post on here about making sure that the two 'index' stickers are aligned when attaching the OTA, which I have done. 

I have done what I can to make sure that the settings are all correct, including time, location etc. 

To overcome these frustrations, I purchased the WiFi attachment to be used with the SkyPortal app. 

This configuration has been a lot more successful! I manage to align the scope using three stars each and every time - progress at last! I have slewed to the ring nebula, hit Andromeda without any problems. I'm finally getting to enjoy the cosmos! 

However, all is not perfect. I slew to Andromeda, have a 5 minute gander at it and then use the 'best tonight' database to slew to something else. This is where it goes wrong. The scope slews to the earth. The on-screen scope location cross also shows it to be pointing at the earth, yet I told the scope to go to Vega. It tried to slew 360 and I had to stop it before the eyepiece smashed into the aux cable. Why would the scope do this? Handset software out of date? Scope set up incorrectly? 

If this sounds like a classic dumb dumb error, please let me know. I'm starting to think my scope is faulty and my lack of experience means I have no way of telling.

Thanks to any helpful tips in advance.

Aaron