HEQ5-PRO Belt Mod

[astrosathya]

Hi Everyone,

I am planning to belt mod my 8 year old HEQ5-PRO with the Rowan Kit. I'd highly appreciate comments and user feedback from folks who've already been using it and the results you've achieved compared to the geared HEQ5-PRO please.

TIA.

[Erling G-P]

I did one on mine recently.  The most tricky part was the untangling and reentangling of the wires.  The instructions mentions 'nipping' the various grub screws, which I had taken too literally - had one of the pulleys slipping in my first outing, so had to tighten them a bit.  Another potential problem was that the belts would 'creep' up or down on the pulleys when changing direction.  Almost eliminated this by careful realigning the pulleys and by loosening the belts, so recommend not making them too tight.

How much of an improvement it's made is hard to say, as I was shooting unguided before, but started guiding along with the belt mod - I had a new, expensive autoguider lying around unused for over a month, due to the apalling winter weather.  Thus while it would be interesting to know, I haven't wanted to sacrifice the precious clear nights on unguided experiments, just to see the isolated improvements of the belts alone.

Unguided and unmodded, with a big SW 200PDS, I was limited to 30 secs exposures, typically throwing away 10-15% due to tracking errors. Any higher than that, and at least 50% would be useless.

With the belt mod & guider, I'm now doing 180 sec (3 minute) exposures, using almost all of them, so the two together are a very substantial improvement.  Could potentially go longer, but test of 5 minutes showed a sky background getting a bit too bright.

[JamesF]

5 minutes ago, Erling G-P said:

The instructions mentions 'nipping' the various grub screws, which I had taken too literally

A technical engineering term, the full meaning of which is only understood after years of experience

James

[Erling G-P]

5 minutes ago, JamesF said:

A technical engineering term, the full meaning of which is only understood after years of experience

James

Lol yes, it would seem so 😁

[1parsec]

3 hours ago, Erling G-P said:

The instructions mentions 'nipping' the various grub screws, which I had taken too literally

Or it could translate to -  don't force on the allen key until it looks like a clock spring 🙂