Meade etx 80 AT help

[Andrew94]

Hello to everyone ! I bought the above mentioned motorised scope 2 days ago for 150£ . Tonight was clear so i decided to try it out... New Duracell batteries, new crt small battery, date and time set, location set to London thow i live in Horsham it does not have this city, 0° inclination, pointing towards north ....but it does not get anything in the viewfinder, it is way off even by 1-2ft.... Daylight saving on...i dont know much about telescopes and mounts so I don't know what to do. If anybody lives near Brighton-Horsham-Crawley-Eastbourne or Portsmouth i can come and maybe you can point me in the right direction. If not advices are welcome!!

[Knighty2112]

Did you put the right date format in? Think you need to do it in American format of month first, then date and year. Had to do that with the Celestron goto mounts I used to own.

Edited November 10, 2020 by Knighty2112

[Dunk]

Hi

I think you will find you have the same problem as me and I have had goto mounts for years. I have not used my Meade goto mount since May due to selling my scopes until  trying my new one today and it was way off and failed to do the two star align twice until I realised day saving is off in the autumn and on in spring when I changed it it worked fine.

[Andrew94]

9 minutes ago, Dunk said:

Hi

I think you will find you have the same problem as me and I have had goto mounts for years. I have not used my Meade goto mount since May due to selling my scopes until  trying my new one today and it was way off and failed to do the two star align twice until I realised day saving is off in the autumn and on in spring when I changed it it worked fine.

So i should change it to off then ? It ia on at the moment.

[Andrew94]

28 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Did you put the right date format in? Think you need to do it in American format of month first, then date and year. Had to do that with the Celestron goto mounts I used to own.

It is showing 11 nov 2020

[Dunk]

2 minutes ago, Andrew94 said:

So i should change it to off then ? It ia on at the moment.

 

[Dunk]

Yes daylight saving is British Summertime star the end of March and ends in October.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Dunk
Wrong month

[Andrew94]

8 hours ago, Dunk said:

Yes daylight saving is British Summertime star the end of March and ends in October.

Set to off but still no luck..

[PEMS]

You are better setting your own location with a goto.

Horsham is 51 00 N, and either - 000  25, or 000  25 W(est) - cannot recall if they use a minus for West or W for West. Make sure of the leading zero's. It will ask for a Timezone and oddly enter UTC -0. Worst and slowest aspect is entering a 3 letter name for the location. The handset is not great. Seem to recall some confusion as you enter all the information and the handset cycles round and asks all over again. Once it repeats itself press Mode. Mode is to exit you one step back up the menu tree. Never did make sense. On the later LS models they changed Mode to Back at least they changed the printing.

Memory and the manual says you get to Site - Add and press Enter. It asks for a 3 character name, supply and press Enter, it asks for the Latitude supply 51  00 and press enter. It asks for the Longitude supply 000 25 W (I think) and Press Enter, it asks for the Timezone supply -0 and press Enter. THEN it asks for a location name IGNORE this and Press MODE. It also confuses you by starting to ask Date and Time just ignore and press Mode. Or as I half think I did power it off. That shut it up.

When you power on next time it uses the location you set and goes through a "normal" power up Q and A cycle. Seem to think the Date on a Meade is easy in that the month is alphabetic, so November is Nov not 11. So difficult to get wrong.

With the defined location the mount just carries on using that until you change or set another. It just uses whatever was last used.

Presently DST is Off or No - cannot recall the exact options given. Just found a manual the options are Yes or No so you pick No.

Usually a good idea to get into the menu and do a Reset. For some reason on a Goto they seem to calculate some data and unless cleared out by a Reset it hangs around and so can be wrong.

Menu: -> means press the Up/Down arrow keys to scroll up/down the options. The 2 buttons are on the bottom not part of the central set of 4.

Set a Location: Select Setup -> Site (press Enter) -> Add (press Enter) - then follow instructions

Reset: Select Setup -> Reset - Press Enter and I would expect confirm in some way.

Find a/the manual and the page with the menu tree is in a way your bible and guiding light.

[saac]

Andrew, are you doing the three star alignment routine - your reported " 1-2 ft off"   is that after your alignment routine?   What alignment stars are you using?  I have the same telescope and alignment and goto performance hasn't been a problem so it should be behaving better than you report. If you can are you able to give some more detail on the steps you are going through when aligning as that may help identify any obvious issues?

Jim

Edited November 15, 2020 by saac