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Subject: Re: [M]: Embarassing LX200 problems
From: Dan Medley
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Fri Aug 15 00:13:35 1997

At 09:41 PM 8/14/97 -0400, Dave Sage wrote:
>Well what do you know - someone else has (had) the same problem. This
>is EXACTLY what I experienced. The scope was definately wacky. I know
>how to use the scope and it wasn't anything I was doing wrong.
> I suspect there are more people out there with inconsistant operation
>than are willing to admit it.
>
>> I had a similar occurance with my 10" LX200 only one time. I had a
>> good polar alignment and things suddenly went bad. Even synching on
>> objects did not help. Like you, I returned to Polaris only to find it
>> way, way off and knew that there was no way this could have happened.
>> I tried to realign and could not get it fixed. I powered the scope
>> off and back on again, did a new polar align and everything was fine
>> again. I still do not know what the cause was.
>>


I've been using my LX-200 in Polar mode for only a few months. I am a
relative new-commer to astronomy, but I have not had ANY problems with it.
In fact, I've done manually guided shots for nearly an hour only having to
do R.A. adjustments on the guide star. Worse case, I am doing very few DEC
adjustments - only three or four times at most for an hour long shot. This
was with just a simple polar alignment at power-up.

I have found that there is no need for me to do a drift alignment when I do
the polar alignment properly. Also, although I have not actually tried it,
you might want to take a look at the re-itterative alignment described by
Howard Anderson on his web page.

Just out of curiosity, how well do other scopes with GOTO capability work?


Regards,
Dan Medley