First night out I ran into two problems, three if you count hazy skies.? Hand controller stopped working.? I would unplug and plug it back in and it would work again.? I did have a virtual HC open on PC.? This happened about 3 times and did not reoccur the second night.? I also had the DEC motor stall warning.? This happened about 3 times than I slightly loosened the spring load and it did not reoccur.? Guiding the first night was OK, +/- 1" in between clouds.
The real problem I have was the second night of guiding.?? It was still hazy, but I would guide on bright stars.? First I spent some time doing PA.? I spent too much time trying polar drift alignment with PHD2.? I didn't like it.? I did go back to regular drift alignment and PA looked good.? I did start with Polemaster, but it never seems as exact as doing a drift alignment.? My guiding was a disaster.? The Dec was a giant sinusoidal wave.? I tried resetting to default values and ran Guide Assistant multiple times and tried backing off on the aggressiveness on Dec guiding.? I changed to guide Dec in North only and the oscillation stopped.? Dec stayed fairly flat, but was shifted about 10" above zero with essentially no guiding.? How do I get the Dec guiding to work properly?
Steve Elmore