HEQ 5 PRO HELP

[hadyn42]

Ok this will probably be another stupid question by me, but here goes!

I have just recently bought the above mount to go with my SW200p. I find it quite hard to understand the instruction book.

Can I just use the hand control to control the telescope in all directions without all the seemingly hard work (to me anyway) of setting up this that and the other, so to speak. It would be great to be able just to slew the scope in this way at first until I get to grasps of using this great looking piece of kit.

I bet you can all tell I am a newbie at this and would very much apreciate some comments on my questuion, whether they be damning or otherwise.

Kindest regards, Hadyn IOM

[red dwalf]

you can use the controls to slew to a object but the problem is the the mount will not be able to track the object for very long,

belive me when i say that setting it up is not that difficult when you get the hang of it.

1. first set up the mount pointing roughly north

2. use the polar finder to center polaris in the finder

3. make sure that the settings on the hand controller are correct including the longitude and latitude

4. mount the scope and away you go, this will give you alot better tracking capabilities

i to found that the instructions for these things are made for people that know what they are doing which counted me out when in bought my cg5 gt mount

[Cornelius Varley]

You can bypass step 3 and control the mount from the handset without having to do a star alignment first.

Peter

[Astro_Baby]

And dont foget to set RATE at 9 so the slew speed runs fast.

[jobe]

i got 1 of these a few weeks ago. my advise is to set it up in your house a couple of times. learn how to adjust the polar scope for dec and az and your just about there.

have you found out how to find your lattitude and longitude?

JOBE

[rcwinter]

Hi Hadyn

It's real easy to get bogged down with the setting up of these mounts and miss the fact that all you want to do at first is just have a look manually and only visually, everything that has been said is correct so far, however for instance I am a solar observer so if I get out to have a view and need to set up, I do not have the luxury of a pole star to setup on. All I do is place the mount down with the mount facing north as discribed and ensure it is levelled off ok, I use a compass on the centre of the mount and use the leg support as the pointer, I then set the lattitude manually on the mount, for instance mine is 50 degrees,, now when you turn on the mount if you want to set in the time etc,, that will enable accurate goto, or if you just want to wizz about, which is what I need to do, I just set the rate and the speed and away you go, just escape every thing else, the tracking will be fine for manual use and I have often gone inside for lunch or the like and the sun is still there when I come out, so visual its fine.. enjoy the mount and scope.

Hope that helps

Richard

Southampton

[hadyn42]

Hello all.

Thank you for your kind help again. I now have some indication on how to set up my heq5 pro. I have been using the eqmod and its software and redshift6 to more the mount yesterday. Tonight I updated the hand control software to 3.27, learnt alot guys, ha, ha.

I also have got used to the hand controller and have updated the slew speed, before I was trying to slew the mount, but nothing seemed to happen, now I have the speed as 8 and wow the mount moves great now on the arrow keys..

I found all your comments very helpful guys...

Thank you very much again,

Hadyn - Isle of Man

[astrokat]

try downloading polar finder its free and very helpfull

toby

[sgazer]

for visual stuff, polar aligment can be approximate, I mean just look through the polarscope and stick polaris in the middle. Or the polarfinder software will give you a more accurate position of polaris relative to the middle of the polarscope. Once this is done, I find that putting a mark on the ground where the 3 leg go is extremely helpful. It allows good enough polar alignment of the scope for visual, without redoing it.