.......and tonight's important lesson was ..........

[steppenwolf]

........ undo the mount clamps after servicing the guide camera or you'll soon discover that it hasn't slewed anywhere - which just might explain the failed platesolve .........

[Laurin Dave]

Been there done that !  Same thing happens if (as I also sometimes do) you try to slew before unparking in Sitech 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Laurin Dave

[Gina]

+1

[tomato]

And those Mesu hooks can be tough to remove if the drive has tried to move with them in place, usually means powering it down to loosen them off.

[steppenwolf]

These things are just sooo easy to do and so time consuming to diagnose and re-calibrate afterwards! There is a happy ending though as once I realised what had gone wrong, a fresh plate-solve took all the pain away and I got 6 hours of good data in the bag 😎

[Laurin Dave]

Indeed they are Steve..  I keep my finder scope handy to quickly put on and sync manually through CdeC, can be quicker than a blind solve if its way out.  A couple of weeks ago my guide star was fading away slowly..  went out to see that the scope was dewing up  ..  very odd I thought as dew control was on.. the next morning discovered that I'd inadvertently switched the power supply to variable and it was only putting out 8 volts..  the good news was that the Mesu and autofocus still worked and the Esprit 100 was clear!  

Dave

[Ibbo!]

Also when swapping the OTA to a longer f/l longer cables from the hub are a good idea