Last night I had clear skies, but glare from the moon's first quarter, and my wonderful neighbors Light Pollution.
Not to be deterred, I forged ahead with my very fresh re-flashed and reloaded Gemini 2 and GM811G mount.
I was pleased to find the mount behaving very well, and after the first star in my model building the rest came in fine.
The weren't centered, but I never expect them to be. That's what Center, and Align do, teach the Gemini 2 where things are currently.
So I went through a 3 West, and a 3 East model building. Focusing. And all the prep work to get things up and running.
Things were looking good! The Mount and Gemini 2 were doing well. Until it did a 180 on me.... 8^0 !
And it got crazier as the evening wore on. Sending the to Park, Counterweight Down, resulted in my telescope seemingly perfectly parked, but 180¡ã from Polaris and the NCP.
I laughed at it's antics. Then observed it slewing as if that was the correct park position, but came close to harness wrap up.
So I started in again, at square zero. And wound up packing things in much earlier than expected because I was not making headway.
Since my mount, with it's fresh install of core software can perform Modeling I don't have any reasons yet to suspect the Gemini 2 of being wonky. So my idea today is to clean up and clean out the many programs I've been testing in my little mount computer. I'm thinking I have some irregularities coming from it, and affecting the Gemini 2's performance and making it confuse Down ¨‹, for Up ¡ø.
Life is a laugh a minute at the Sleepy Dog Observatory.
If anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears.
--
SonnyE
(I suggest viewed in full screen)
