HELP! Synscan Dec Axis moving -20 below horizon!

[Josh123SV]

Greetings all, 

 

I have had my EQ5 synscan mount for approximately a couple of months, and it has proven itself to be fairly good. Ordinarily, 2 star alignment has been easy for me, only taking a couple of minutes with good polar alignment. Also, the first star that the mount slews to is usually only a few degrees from the centre of my crosshairs. However, today I was left disappointed and incredibly frustrated after the mount kept being off by HUGE amounts. My first star to align at is usually Sirius which is around 16 degrees above horizon and the mount tends to slew to within a couple degrees of this. Today, the synscan mount went -15 below horizon. Additionally, The RA was spot on but it was just the dec that was off. Therefore, I believe the issue lies with the synscan remote talking to the declination motor. My Polar alignment was very accurate today. 

 

I have tried solving this issue by turning the mount off and on the mount, changing the RA and Dec cables and factory resetting the mount, but none of these worked. 

 

Does anybody know how to solve this issue? 

 

Clear skies and working equipment! 😂

Josh

 

Is there any solution to this problem and if so, how may it be achieved 

[Budgie1]

A couple of things to check:

1. When you switch the mount on, send it to the Home Position on the hand set and see if it moves from the scope up, counter weights down position. If it does move and does not stop in the normal Home Position, undo the RA & DEC clutches and manually move it to the correct position. This is just to make sure the mount knows where it's starting from.
2. Make sure you tell the handset that we're now in BST/DST (assuming you're in the UK ).  

[Josh123SV]

thank you mate 

 

[bosun21]

As @Budgie1 has just said have you changed the daylight savings time to ON. As the BST just started last week and your mount was working fine previously. If not then this will account for the errors you are experiencing. The mount should be in the home position when you first power it on. This gives it a set starting position each time.

[adyj1]

I highly recommend using the android app 'synscaninit' when setting up my handset. It gives you all the settings to enter, reminding me to use American date settings and the right daylight saving settings. It also gives me the right lat/long co-ordinates if I'm away from home.