East Heavy Improvement

[Sarek]

Last night, as an experiment,  I thought I'd adjust the RA balance on my mount to be slightly east heavy. 

Pleasantly surprised to get pretty consistent results beneath 0.75RMS - which for my mount is a 20% to 30% improvement . Obviously it's just one session and there are many other factors but if you haven't tried it yet it may be worth a go.

[Clarkey]

Works well until your meridian flip. Then you have to move the weight. As I leave my rig outside to remotely image while I am tucked up in bed, I have to keep it balanced.

[ollypenrice]

This is why friction drive is so good. The mighty Mesu has no backlash.  

Newcomers reading this might not know that the Dec equivalent of east-heavy loading is running slightly out of polar alignment and guiding only in the direction needed to correct for this. Again, the disabled direction has to become the active one after a flip.

Olly

Edited Thursday at 07:51 by ollypenrice
Clarification

[Clarkey]

2 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The mighty Mesu has no backlash

I'll have two please.😄

Not sure SWMBO would approve.🙁

[ollypenrice]

13 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

I'll have two please.😄

Not sure SWMBO would approve.🙁

The trick is to be impossible to live with on account of  mount backlash problems. Done properly, this will see you given a Mesu next Christmas. It worked for me - twice.

lly

[Clarkey]

21 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

The trick is to be impossible to live with

That's normal. I'm not sure another reason would be acceptable🤣