I did just this in the afternoon. I cleaned everything pretty well. But I found when I removed the worm the entire assembly of ring gear and everything spun freely. When I put the worm back in the RA assembly would have that stickiness again. It seems to be the clutch, even fully loosened it¡¯s a bit sticky. Make it harder to balance in RA. Dec spins freely, just assumed the RA axis would as well.
Mike
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
Hi Doug
one more thing regarding the polar scope, and your comment "The app I have on my phone to match the reticle never seems to be in the same position when looking through the reticle of the polar scope...."
just to confirm, you rotate the polar scope so the position of polaris would line up with the app on your phone
Brian
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
Hi Doug
"?I verified the coordinates and UTC time."
just confirming, the time you should be entering into Gemini should be local time, and the timezone should offset that to UTC. you should not enter UTC time
"Using the buttons I could manually slew to where I wanted, but the tracking was off.? "
if tracking is off (I assume you can visually see it not tracking correctly), Chip mentioned some of these before, but recapping the possible causes:
- incorrect mount type selected
- incorrect gearing for the mount (check the gearing page for G11, the first two should be RA Worm Gear 360 and DEC Worm Gear 360)
- not on sidereal tracking (lunar, solar, custom, etc.)
- motor cables plugged in to the wrong port (RA/DEC cables reversed)
Some of the above could also contribute to or cause inaccurate gotos
Brian
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
I'm hoping to get back out one night this week and try in my backyard. ?I'll post back with my results.
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
I don't know if the GPS has the firmware fix for GPS rollover. ?But I did verify everything. ?Using the buttons I could manually slew to where I wanted, but the tracking was off. ?The polar alignment was good, but then it would overshoot everything in the GOTO, including trying to use stars to verify alignment.
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
Yep, all the wires were connected properly. ?I always check and double check before powering on.
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
Thanks, Michael!
The gears definitely were not slipping, I did check all of that. ?I always cold start, so I don't think that was the issue. ?I thought the Cold Start always deleted previous data.
As for the others, everything was tight, so the tracking was not off because of that.
And the GPS is brand new. ?I bought it from OPTCorp website the week before. ?I verified the coordinates and UTC time.
The tracking mode was sidereal, I haven't changed that at all.
I haven't had a chance to set the mount up again to try, but I'm hoping to one night this week. ?
Doug
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Re: G11 Mount Not Tracking Correctly
I was using the GPS, so it pulled data from there automatically. ?I did verify it was correct.
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Mike- I recently purchased a second hand G11 and found the RA axis very difficult to move with the gears removed. I removed the RA head, removed, cleaned and regreased the bearings and it solved it completely. I carefully inspected all of the bearings and if any looked anything other than perfect I was prepared to order replacements. In my case, they all looked good and cleaning and grease was all that was needed. If you're at all mechanically inclined I'd recommend going one level deeper into your mount and see what you find.
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Re: Excellent seeing in Sydney
i'm always astonished by planetary movies with moons passing by. so cool
Thanks guys. Jupiter and Saturn pass at the zenith every evening now. Here's a quick animation of Jupiter and two of its moons in the field over a period of ~1h.
-- Brian?
Brian Valente portfolio
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Re: Excellent seeing in Sydney
Marc,
Absolutely wonderful detail.? Messiers A and B really stand out to me...well done!
Matt
We had a one in ten years night in Sydney last week-end when the jetstream dropped to 1 knot on the whole easter coast. Got out quickly and captured frames on Jupiter, Saturn and kept shooting panels on the moon. It was a random exercise browsing along the surface with the GCC at 2.6m FL and recording interesting bits for hours. It was very still and I had a lot of fun. In the end some of the panels (~6'x4.8' fov) overlapped so I made a few unplanned mosaics. The scope was a Takahashi CN-212 at the cassegrain focus F/12.4 and the camera an ASI 120MM on my trusted G11.
Captured with Firecapture in 8bit SER files ~3000 frames each, processed in Autostakkert 3 then levels in Photoshop. I used a program called Registar to do the mosaic. It usually registers deepsky shots by matching the star patterns but in this case the pictures were so sharp it could hook onto the small craters and bright features edges highlight so it did a reasonable job.
Here are the links to the panels I stitched:
Enjoy the views.
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Re: Excellent seeing in Sydney
Thanks guys. Jupiter and Saturn pass at the zenith every evening now. Here's a quick animation of Jupiter and two of its moons in the field over a period of ~1h.
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Hi Mike
is your worm gear engaged? If you are comfortable with disassembly you might try disengaging your worm gear and rotating the RA shaft to isolate if it's the shaft itself or something related to the gearing
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Hi Mike,
I don't have an answer for you, there I know there are members here who do.
So hang on until the cavalry arrives.
--
SonnyE
(I suggest viewed in full screen)
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Hello,
I have my older CG-11 apart and noticed with the dec axis off, and the clutch loose, the RA axis is actually hard to return at three points along its full revolution. Is this normal? Seems like the shaft might have been dropped by a prior owner or it¡¯s somehow not straight. I have it stripped down like in the photo and am turning it by hand.
If it¡¯s normal it seems easy to change out, I see a set screw holding it on the that top plate the dec boots to. Is it something I can get from Losmandy?
Also, I don¡¯t have the altitude locking bolts, I figure Losmandy can add that if I wanted it, seems difficult to DIY
Thanks in advance,
Mike
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Thanks everyone,
I got it working the next evening. I did nothing different, just set up, leveled and balanced, did polar alignment and shut down. Restarted and blam!,?the mount worked as if nothing happened.?
On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 4:43 PM Brian Valente < bvalente@...> wrote: Hi James
Speaking of weird, i didn't even receive your original post in my email.... only Chip's response??
You don't need to "reset the encoders" but i would recommend that you do a reset to HGM defaults. Menu->System->Reset HGM defaults and power cycle
after that, Chip's recommendation is spot on
"?Usually all you need to do is start over as if you had just arrived and were setting up for the first time that night, power down and then do a Cold Boot and it should be fine."
on this
>>>Balance, level, turn the mount on, cold start, and then shut down before polar alignment. Then warm restart, polar align, and build a 1 to 4 star model.?
i'm not sure i understand the warm start part of your startup procedure.
I would just balance, level, polar align (if you are using the PA scope), the cold start, build model.
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Hi James
Speaking of weird, i didn't even receive your original post in my email.... only Chip's response??
You don't need to "reset the encoders" but i would recommend that you do a reset to HGM defaults. Menu->System->Reset HGM defaults and power cycle
after that, Chip's recommendation is spot on
"?Usually all you need to do is start over as if you had just arrived and were setting up for the first time that night, power down and then do a Cold Boot and it should be fine."
on this
>>>Balance, level, turn the mount on, cold start, and then shut down before polar alignment. Then warm restart, polar align, and build a 1 to 4 star model.?
i'm not sure i understand the warm start part of your startup procedure.
I would just balance, level, polar align (if you are using the PA scope), the cold start, build model.
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That's weird, which Gemini do you have? Usually all you need to do is start over as if you had just arrived and were setting up for the first time that night, power down and then do a Cold Boot and it should be fine. The way servo motor encoders work and your symptoms tells me it is probably fine and will get straightened out with a hard reset to factory settings. How you do that depends on the version Gemini you have.?
?
--
Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware?
? ?Astropheric Weather Forecast - South Pasadena, CA?
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Hi Steve
when you balance RA here are a couple things to keep in mind:
- rotate your RA axis past parallel to the ground
- one side is usually more loose than the other, so try both sides of pier
?
On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 10:06 AM Steve Elmore via <gizmo_s67= [email protected]> wrote: When balancing my scope, the DEC axis spins freely and is easy to balance.? Why doesn't the RA axis? And how can that be fixed?? I have already installed the wavy washer.
-- Brian?
Brian Valente portfolio
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When balancing my scope, the DEC axis spins freely and is easy to balance.? Why doesn't the RA axis? And how can that be fixed?? I have already installed the wavy washer.
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James B
Chip Louie
Steve Elmore