Cause of awkward mount behaviour?

[JamesF]

I posted in another thread a few days back about a NEQ6 that requires guiding recalibration after a meridian flip so that guiding isn't, well, worse than not guiding, basically. Once calibrated, in either orientation, the mount quite happily guides with an error of < 1" RMS.  michael8554 suggested that this might be down to the "Reverse Dec Output after Meridian Flip" option in PHD2, but actually I'm using the Ekos internal guider rather than PHD2 and it doesn't appear to have this option that I can see, though I'm happy to have my lack of knowledge removed on this issue.  I'm pretty sure there are people imaging using Ekos without needing to recalibrate guiding after an automated flip, too.

It's just occurred to me that there have been occasions when I've slewed the mount and captured an image (for plate solving) of a few seconds exposure immediately afterwards which shows quite extreme trailing of stars.  A subsequent exposure is usually fine.

My current thinking is this could be down to one, either or both of balance and backlash.  Balance I think is actually quite reasonable, so perhaps the cause is purely backlash (I'm including worm end float in "backlash" for this purpose).

Does this sound like a reasonable diagnosis?  Is there anything else obvious I might have missed?

James

[Anne S]

I tried my first meridian flips in the spring to image Thor's helmet. I also found that my EQ6 trailed the first sub after the flip if I started too quickly. I don't think it was balance as my eq6 was belt modded and balanced well and it improved after the first sub. I was running pec through Eqmod, maybe that was slow to start.

I guided in Maxim DL5. I'd not imaged both sides of the meridian before.  

My method was to park the scope once the last sub had finished and wait until Thor's helmet was past the meridian then do a fresh goto and platesolve. Then restart the guiding. Maxim should adjust the guiding without calibrating. It just seemed to take a bit of time, I was using 20 minute subs so it was a pain. I didn't have tracking beyond the meridian enabled.

I don't know if any of the above applies to you.

[JamesF]

I'm not aware that INDI does PEC, so I don't think that's going to be an issue.

What I'd like to be able to do though is just set up a sequence of subs for capture and have Ekos flip the mount automatically and just carry on without my intervention.  If the guiding won't restart reliably by itself that's not going to happen :(

James

[Anne S]

So would I but that's not going to happen at home. I mean to try it one day when I'm at a starparty. I just need something to work with Maxim to enable it. Or switch to SGpro.

Hopefully someone who can autoflip will come along soon.