HEQ5 - how to use custom park position?

[Breakintheclouds]

I notice my HEQ5 Pro offers three park options: Home, Custom and Current. I'm wondering how I define the Custom position?

As an experiment, I tried slewing to a random place and then selecting 'park to current position'. This seemed to work fine - when I turned the mount back on and did a one-star align to Vega, it went from where I'd left it and slewed to where Vega would be. I hoped that this might now have set the custom position, but when I then chose 'Park to custom position' it went back to the home position.

Anybody managed to work this out? I know EQMOD offers lots of lovely alternative options, but I'm not in a position to use that right now...

[Andrew INT]

Hi,

I also have a skywatcher 200mm on an HEQ5 Pro.

I managed to set a custom home (with the finder scope pointing at a distant roof).

I cant remember what I did exactly since it was a about three years ago. I'll dig out some of my notes and see if I recorded anything...

[Breakintheclouds]

Thanks, Andrew - I know how easy it is to solve a problem and then forget how you did it (!) but it would be great if you can remember this one.

[Andrew INT]

Hi, I checked my notes. Unfortunately I didn't write down my actions. It was raining pretty hard last night so I couldn't have a play, but I'll try again when I get home from work this evening - this time making notes!

This may be of some help until this evening...

I always observe from my garden which has a view of Polaris just over my roof. I have marked the lawn out with three small flat tiles (the tiles are actually three small bits of paving from the Champs Elyse, Paris which had been dug up during a riot...not by me I might add!)

This way, each night I simply plop the tripod onto the markers and it is already close to being polar aligned. I then polar align and fit/balance the telescope. My custom home position it lined up with the edge of a neighbours roof to the east (through the finder scope). In this manner, when I begin the three star alignment, the target stars are already close to the centre of the finder scope.

With regards to setting the custom home position. I think (although I'll confirm for you this evening), I moved the scope into the position I wanted using the usual arrows to slew. Under the utilities menu I'm sure there was an option call "set as home". It was then just a case of turning the mount off. It certainly wasn't a complicated thing to do (provided you can find things in the menu).

I know this isn’t a great help at the moment, but I promise to try and re-define my custom home position this evening and tell you what I did.

All the best, Andrew

[Andrew INT]

Hmm, I tried the parking this evening. I selected park current, and turned off. After turning back on again this position had been placed into the custom home. This is what you did before, so I'm not sure why it didn't work, sorry.

[Breakintheclouds]

Andrew,

I really appreciate your checking. I'll try it again tomorrow and make 100% certain that I get different results to you.

Ian