Meade LX90 slewing issue

I have an LX90 which started doing something odd last night.

After slewing to Mars, I used the handbox to move Mars into the exact centre of the viewfinder.
However, once I let go of the controls, the 'scope decided to move itself, pushing Mars to the edge of view.
In fact, every time I touched the controls, once I had finished, the 'scope just moved it.

Anyone know what might be causing this, and how I can stop it?

thanks

John

Hi John,
I don’t have an LX-90 but I have seen similar phenomena with a Celestron CG5-GT mount when the "backlash settings" are too aggressively set on the hand control and the scope view tends to jump slightly to one side of the celestial target. It’s a simple check to do and at least you can eliminate that aspect quickly.

Clear skies
Mike

John

I found this which seems to describe your problem and proposes a solution

jan.eaglecreekobservatory.org/common.html#3

I used to have the same problem with my old ETX-70. At the time I wrote it down to firmware and my Autostar hand controller was non-upgradable so I lived with the frustration for a while.

Hopefully the above is on the ball. In my understanding its Meade/Autostar way of dealing with what Mike described in which case training the drive might just be the ticket.

Mark

Thanks Mike and Mark - doing the re-training and making sure to only use the arrow keys in one direction seemed to fix it up good as new!

I was able to get some great viewing on Mars tonight as a result