Now this is really going back to basics but it is just as well I sort this
out now rather than months further down the road and realize I have been
tweaking the polar alignment incorrectly.

Am I right to conclude that drift alignment is adjusting only errors in
the dec axis and RA is left alone entirely?

I follow Chris Vaughn's method of drift alignment (as described on Phillip
Perkins website) and have a prism in my LX200 that inverts the image. In
all cases, Dec is up and down (North and South) and RA is right and left
(East and West) as on the keypad.
I have no serious problems with aligning on a star near the meridian and
+20° dec. If the star drifts up (North), turn the azimuth knob to move the
star right in the field (as viewed through the telescope). This is straight
forward and I can tweak it pretty well.

Now I find a star on the equator and within 15° of the eastern horizon. If
the star drifts up ( we are still talking about dec so this means north
and south as far as the OTA - and keypad - is concerned and not up in the
traditional sense of toward the zenith) and adjust the elevation to move
the star down (but now this must mean down as in south according to the
original definition or are we talking about east-west now??). If the star
drifts down, adjust the elevation to move the star up.
Can you tell I'm a little confused?

No matter how long I tweak, I always get dec drift remaining and it is more
noticeable at the horizon and, of course, my efforts at digital imaging are
lousy becuase of the drift.

What I would like to hear from someone is that I have the second part of
the alignment completely akimbo. If so, could you help to explain it real
simple for me?

Thanks, Alan

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