Skywatcher flextube 300 goto tries to tilt in the wrong direction and hits the dob base backboard

[jonathan]

I'm sure this must have been asked before but my search skills are obviously not up to the task, I apologise in advance for asking the same question here.

With the telescope in a vertical custom park position, if I tell it to point at an object low to the horizon it might just decide to tilt the telescope downwards, but unfortunately this means it will quickly hit the backboard of the dob mount, what it ought to be doing is rotating the mount so that it can tilt down in the other direction to get onto the target.

So what would cause this and what would the solution be?  There must be some setting in the configuration to tell it that it's at it's vertical position and can only tilt downwards in the other direction, then it needs to rotate to the target, but where in the handset menus would that be?  I couldn't find anything in that regard, and from my limited goto experience (which was with Celestron, not Skywatcher) the nearest thing I can think of is cable wrap, which I could never get to work properly on a Celestron goto anyway.  Do I need to reset the altitude readings somehow?

Thanks.

Edited October 15, 2021 by jonathan

[GordonD]

I wasn't aware you could define a custom park position. I always turn mine on pointing level and North and I haven't seen the issue you are getting. On a good day the GoTo works really well, but other days it is always a few degrees off and I have tried everything to make it reliable with no luck (for a year) so if you do manage to find a way to get it set up reliably I would love to hear it. It always tracks really well once on target though.

I don't use the handset, but instead use the Synscan App on both a phone and a tablet. The combination of that with SkySafari is just great. Well when the GoTo is working accurately anyway. Also have an AZ EQ5-GT and that is much more reliable in terms of GoTo.

Interested to hear how you get on.

Gordon