12/27/2003

Sometimes it doesn't pay to believe everything you read. The Meade manual says [paraphrasing]: "To do a polar alignment, release the RA and DEC clutches and manually position the telescope so it points at Polaris. Tighten the clutches and press ENTER."

From that, I believed that I'd needed to have clutches in the RA and DEC drives in my fork design. Actually, the autostar is perfectly happy to let me position the telescope to point to Polaris by using the arrow keys.

Since I've been having any number of problems with the clutches slipping when the scope slews, I decided to bite the bullet and apply some five-minute epoxy to the clutch assembly. The tabbed washers are now glued to the gear. The result is a much more positive GOTO and even less backlash.

I re-did the CALIBRATE and TRAIN DRIVES steps. Now all I need is some good observing conditions to test this with...

This page copyright (c) 2003 - 2004 by David A. Wallace.