do you have to recalibrate the CG5 a few times per session?

I was out last night with the CG5GoTo, which im still getting used to, but is proving very very good. I have a few questions regarding its usage.

1. I done an allign, polar allign, allign then 2 star calibration. After this it found objects such as mars with no difficulty and kept it in the FOV for many minutes, however after about 2 hours, when i moved onto saturn, i found saturn kept moving out of the FOV. should I re-calibrate after a few hours, or if i move between objects a good distance apart?

2. I noticed that if i manually moved to an object and the last movement i used to center the object was in the negative dec direction(down button on the hand control), the object would drift out of the FOV, however if the last movement i used to center the object was positive DEC, ( the up button on the controller) , the object stayed in FOV of my camera much longer. is this something to do with play in the gears?


3. Ive heard of need to train the Meade etx scopes motors. is this required with the CG5, or is it done using the allign process during each observing session?

should I re-calibrate after a few hours, or if i move between objects a good distance apart?

I'd imagine you should recalibrate when moving from one object to another a good bit away from it.

Also i'd imagine Saturn was drifing out of your FOV quicker then Mars due to the size difference between both of them and distance from earth?

Just my 2 cents.

When you mention moving the scope manually, are you using the hand controller to move it?
Are you placing the mount on a solid surface? If its on grass the slightest amount of sinkage on the tripod will throw off your alignment.

Fintan,

The CG5 doesn't have encoders so when you move it manually it doesn;t know where it is pointing. You must not move it manually at any time or else you must realign. Always use the goto to take you where you want. However there is a little trick I used to use. If I wanted to move the scope manually. I used the goto to something bright and easy to find manually, bright star or planet. The scope tinks thats where it is pointed. You can then move the scope manually as long as you recener the original bright object manually before you do your next goto.

Oh by the way NONE of that affects the tracking ability on a eq mount. As long as the scope has been roughly polar aligned you don't even have to 2 star align to track. Just press

Utilities->Tracking->Mode>EQ-North. and the scope will track an object it is pointed to.

Fintan,

The CG5 doesn't have encoders so when you move it manually it doesn;t know where it is pointing. You must not move it manually at any time or else you must realign.

Just so as I know I understand you, If I point at a known star using goto, then move the mount manually using the hand controller directional pad, as far as teh mount is concerned, its still pointing at the object. is that correct? Thats a pretty big down point for the mount.
Would it have made the mount much more expensive if it was to know what co-ordinates it was pointing at regardless of if the goto was used or manually via the hand controller? Meh, have to live with it anyway so better just get used to it.

Thanks for the workaround technique. It makes sense to me and will prove useful.