Troubleshooting guiding

[Shimonu]

One of the problems I was having before the summer was somewhat poor guiding and I haven't figured out if this is due to my mount, the guide scope or perhaps something I'm doing wrong with balancing, PA, etc.

I've found some guide logs that I've been looking at but I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at or where I should pay attention. I've got the PHD2 log viewer and one of my sessions from January looks pretty decent, I've got an average of 1.38" total RMS which for my image scale is more than fine. However, looking at a later log from April it shows an average of 1.79" and I remember around this time having pretty poor guiding, even after starting to use multi-star guiding.

My main suspect right now is my mount and I'm hoping the guide logs can help me confirm it. For one it's quite an old mount that I've bought second hand. On the controller board I've seen parts marked from -06 and -07 so likely at least 10 years old and I'm not sure if any maintenance has been done. If I try to move the RA axis by hand I can feel a bit of play, compared to the DEC axis which is rock solid.

I'll post some logs, hopefully they'll tell a good story.

guide_log-2021-04-03T21-48-41.txt guide_log-2021-07-21T23-49-10.txt guide_log-2021-01-26T19-05-16.txt

[Shimonu]

Or if I should perhaps have a more concrete question. Is it possible to see the RA backlash measured in the calibration? I've only seen it referenced as an output for the PHD2 guiding assistant.