The declination motor is a waste of time.

[The Warthog]

A couple of years ago, I motorized both axes of my EQ3-2. This does a wonderful job of following objects (I should mention that I am a visual observer, the dec motor may be useful to photographers; I don't know,) but I often found myself undoing the clutch on the dec axis to position objects in the FOV without waiting for the interminable 5 second lag before the motor caught the gear and started moving at a glacial 2º/min. I used the dec motor for a long time to move up and down the Moon, but nowadays I just leave the clutch loosened and do all my dec adjustments by hand.

If I have to replace the dec motor, I won't bother, and if I want to get a motor for another mount, I would get just the RA motor and save some time and bother. At least as long as the RA motor can slew back and forth when needed.

In any case, my next mount will be goto, and I hear they have decent slew rates.

[A McEwan]

Agreed. Much as I love the EQ3s and have had a few (another one coming) the Dec drive is surplas to visual use requirements.

[great_bear]

Would it be useful if they made the DEC much faster - so you could use it to "kick" things back into view that were drifting out?

(which is often the case if you've intentionally only done a very rough Polar Alignment for speed reasons)

[russ]

I found this with my EQ5 and the dual drives. The motors are so slow and unresponsive that i released the clutch on the dec and used the manual slow-mo. A lot of the time i didn't bother with the motors at all, using the slow-mo for both axis. In the end i just thought this is pointless, so sold the EQ5 and bought an AltAz mount instead.

[PhilD]

Couldn’t agree more.

[TheThing]

Well, if you're looking to get rid of the motor you have, Warthog, I've been after a good 2nd hand one for ages! PM me!

[Chris_J]

Are the motor units the same for the dec and RA axis?

[The Warthog]

Not in the dual drive kit, Chris. The RA motor attaches via a sleeve and set screw, but the dec motor has a clutch that allows you do disengage it to allow for manual adjustment.

I saw a picture of a single RA drive for an EQ-5, which had a clutch, but I don't know if that is available on the EQ3-2 RA drive, or if they just showed the wrong picture.

Thing, I'm thinking about that!