Is there any reason why the ns keys should both fail and come good together?

Or is it some setting or position I am not aware of that prevents the dec
drive from working in what seems to me to be a safe position? If this is the
case, there is a warning on the keypad display and I haven't seen any error
messages at all.

Colin,

I take it when you set the scope up that you set the RA & Dec at 0 degrees?
If you don't do that then it is possible that the Dec
will stop in an apparently 'safe' position as mine kept doing recently until
I got some sound advice from some of the other Mapugers.

Andy.

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: 04 May 1999 09:19
> Subject: [M]: Re: LX200 Dec Stops Responding
>
> Greetings all,
>
> Last night I had my 10" f10 LX200 out for only the fourth time since it
> arrived over two months ago (Tropical weather during "the wet" is not kind
> to star gazers).
>
> Everything was working fine, just poking around looking. Then I decided to
> try the electronics and goto. I aligned on two stars and even got it
> right,
> with everything from then on coming into the fov of the 26mm super Plossl.
>
> Then, the dec drive stopped responding to north or south keys.
>
> Everything was free, nothing close to contacting, east-west keys were
> working fine, but ns keys both continued to have no response.
>
> The dec drive worked fine in goto, although at times it sounded like it
> was
> coming under irregular load - a brmmmm....brmmmmm.....brmmmmm sort of
> noise.
> Balance was fine. Nothing was hindering the scope in any way I could find,
> nor was the tube close to the forks or vertical.
>
> Then the NS keys both started working again.
>
> The same thing happened again later in the night. No response to ns keys,
> but ok on goto, then later coming good.
>
> My first thoughts are:
>
> The dec drive obviously responds if it gets the right signal, because the
> goto works every time. So must it be the keypad, in particular the
> keys/connections for the ns keys?
>
> Is there any reason why the ns keys should both fail and come good
> together?
>
> Or is it some setting or position I am not aware of that prevents the dec
> drive from working in what seems to me to be a safe position? If this is
> the
> case, there is a warning on the keypad display and I haven't seen any
> error
> messages at all.
>
> The battery charge seems fairly constant and shows no signs of fluctuating
> in time to the brmmm...brmmm...noise.
>
> I have looked around the recent threads (or is it, the on-going thread?)
> about dec drive problems, gone to the archives etc, and while I can find
> plenty of dec drive problems I haven't seen the same as mine.
>
> Hopefully this is "common-cockup-by-new-lx200-owner-number-2,342" and my
> problems can be solved with a little information.
>
> Cheers,
>
> colin james

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