LXD 75 Aligning Problems

Time, Date and daylight saving are all fine. I think the drives are trained properly but i'll do it again just to be sure. Thwe stars are Capella and Pollux and sometimes its Capella and Proyon.

I'll check the batteries and get back to you on it.

Yeah the batteries are fine and the location is too.
I'll try training the drives tonight if its clear and see if it works then.

BTW: it is about 2-3 Degrees out.

Thanks David

Hm when you say the batteries are fine I wonder.

My humble experience has shown that any goto scope requires the batteries to be absolutely perfect. Any slight loss in power will result in bad gotos long before problems with slewing become apparent. If you can try and run it off the mains and see if it works properly then. You should definately invest in a portable power tank. You can get them in maplins for about €30. Batteries are just too unreliable

Training the drives is also a good possibility as backlash can cause such a discrepency. It only takes a few minutes to do and is worth a shot.

Capella and procyan are quie close together and if you can you should try to get ones as far apart as possible. Down arrow to pick a different star.

The other thing I can think of is how accurately are you alligning the stars. I first of all centre in my lowest eyepiece and then swith to my highest eyepiece and centre again before finally pressing enter.

What objects did you slew to which caused a problem? is it all objects or just one inoparticular. I find that sometimes slewing to the Moon, or other nearby objects can be inaccurate due to inaccuracies in the calculation of the position by the autostar and other deep sky objects are fine.

Hope this helps. I am certain you will soon get to the botom of the problem.

Hi David

Thanks for the replies,
I have checked the batteries thouroghly and they are all perfect, full power.

I didn't get around to training the drives yet but as soon as theres a good night i will,

I will also take your advice on changing the stars to suit

I am using a 18mm eyepiece and setting the stars in the very centre of the veiw.

To be honest all the onject are different, for example: When it slew to Mars, it is nearly perfect as it is with certain stars but when it slews to Saturn or the orion nebula and some galaxies it could be as much as 10 degrees out.

Thanks again

Hey John, a small tip - you can train the drives during the day - in fact it's much easier that way! It can make a big difference to the slewing, particularly if the gears have a bit of play in them as is often the case with this mount.

How do i train the drives during the day?