Guidemaster dec corrections reversed

[sgazer]

I've recently upgraded my setup so I now have a HEQ5 with EQ mod and everything is controlled from my laptop via a single USB cable. (I used to use a CG5-GT with guiding from the laptop parallel port to the guide port).

The new set up is great, but I sometimes have a strange problem with Guidemaster (gm) and was wondering if anyone else had seen the same.

I run the gm calibration route, and it calibrates fine, RA and DEC go in the directions expected and it all looks ok. However sometimes, when guiding, the dec corrections go the wrong way! ie. it will start guiding, but when it comes to make a dec correction, it will do it in the wrong direction and of course the guide star will get further and further away from where it should be. It's not that eqmod is interpreting the command wrongly, it's actually gm that is sending the wrong direction (I can tell because the direction buttons light up green when corrections are made).

Initially, it seemed to be related to starting up CDC first, but after a few more uses it seems pretty random whether it does this or not. Usually, redoing the calibration sorts it, but last night was particularly bad in that I had to close and restart gm a couple of times before it stopped doing it.

So I can usually overcome the problem with a few recals or restarting gm, but it is an inconvenience.

Other than that, Guidemaster is excellent and I've had great results with it.

[sgazer]

hmm, seems like it must be quite a rare issue then. I tried emailing the guy who wrote GM from the website, but the email got returned. I tried joining the forum, but it kept getting rejected, but as it was in another language, I couldn't work out why, so I might have to try again.

[sgazer]

I know answering my own posts is the first sign of madness!!.....but I tried the older version of Guidemaster and it sometimes did the same, ie. correcting in the wrong DEC direction. However, the old version has a very useful feature which has been removed for the new version, that is a check box to reverse the DEC (or RA) corrections. So when this problem does occur, it's simply a matter or checking this box, where-as on the new version, I have to try recalibrating or even restarting the software. So I'm now using the old version with great success.