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6se power connector help


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For the first time I managed to get the scope out since it arrived on monday.

Just as it went dark I managed to find three stars to align this scope.

After reading that some people have difficulties in aligning these scopes first time i was not expecting too much however The week in cloud gave me time to read up on the subject and to my amazement it did the 3 star align first time. So.. I sent it to Altair, i knew it was visible as Stellarium clearly showed it was in the middle of my viewing area.

To my total shock and amazement the scope fired up and slewed straight to it, not only was it in the ep it was almost perfectly in the centre, i was very very impressed.

So, my first test was to see how well it kept alignment.

I let it track for about 20 minutes, lots of faint whirring and a cup of coffee later it was still in the ep, hardly moved from the a centre.

So.. Thought I would ask it to find Saturn (it was behind a tree but i just wanted to see how it handle jumping around a few objects). lots of whirring later it pointed around the area Stellarium said it should be.. Great!

So.. Chose another object and that is when the problems started.

Whilst skewing the scope lost power for a second and all my alignment joy was lost.. Ok i thought, just align again and off you go. How wrong could i be.

About 3 hours later and i called it a night, i have aligned and aligned and aligned, and it failed every time.

I checked the time format, the date format etc.. But it fails each time, and the power flicked off several times.

I am running from a mains adaptor suggested by FLO and with a cable bought from FLO, but no matter what I did i could not get the cable to keep a good connection. If i moved the cable at all it would cause a power outage. I read that the pins of the connector can be opened up to help make contact. I did this tentatively but didn't help that much to be honest, and i don't want to open the pins up more for fear of breaking them.

How can alignment work perfectly first time and ever since not work at all?

My only thought is that the power connection is not solid enough to keep the power consistent enough to set alignment maybe.

If I open up the battery area and connect directly to the battery power points I assume this would cause no damage but i could fix the cables there much more solidly that the stupid 2.1mm connector on the side.

Has anyone else had this sort of alignment issue, and is it possible that this dodgy connector could have caused so many failed attempts? If so.. Any tips.

I must say though, that when I did some unguided viewing just slewing slowly across the skies I couldn't believe how many stars there were in my EP and the sharpness was amazing. The collomation looked spot on. Totally defocused stars were perfectly symmetrical doughnuts, so i assume this means it is spot on.

So.. 1st time report..

Great views, although little looked at and no learning of eyepiece choice due to time taken trying to align.

Motors slightly noisier than expected but ok. Really easy to understand controls on the handset. Perfect tracking when correctly aligned.

Learned not to leave the doors open with my pc screen on in the front room.. Moths like buzzards circling when i went inside.

I did hook up my spc900 and managed to get a very small number of images of Altair when I did single star align but, as was expected, single star align does not do well for tracking.

All of the above has been spoiled somewhat with this power connector and alignment problem, that I think may be connected. Do any of you guys have any suggestions to the above?

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I don't have a Celestron but I seem to recall a couple of years back many posts of similar problems. As I recall the pin or plug used is not a standard diameter so contact is lost occasionally.

Think the difference is about 0.1mm but it makes the connector loose and causes problems.

The idea being you buy the Celestron offering not a standard item. Bet it costs more however.

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My SE8 did the same. The cable with the powertank was a poor fit so I bought a cable from FLO which I leave connected and held in place with a cable tie round the mount to stop it pulling. No problems since.

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My SE8 did the same. The cable with the powertank was a poor fit so I bought a cable from FLO which I leave connected and held in place with a cable tie round the mount to stop it pulling. No problems since.

Exactly my fix too :D

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