I've seen similar. My concern is that there may be a more major issue with the mount, i.e. something where the upper portion where the optical tube assembly is fastened is out of alignment with the base of the mount.

The good news is that I've had pretty steady tracking of objects with the motors, so I'm most inclined to think that the polar scope is off. When I looked more closely at how the mount is assembled, the polar scope is held in with three adjustable screws, and are subject to jarring. When I looked down the mount into the area where the polar scope attaches from the top, I could see that it does not appear to be well aligned with a mostly equal spacing all around it. It was leaning up.


The part that had me most concerned was removing the t-bar on the latitude adjustment. That seems plain weird that the lowest you could move the scope with the t-bar (and brake) was about 27-28. I kept thinking something was screwed up. I figured having to remove that adds a significant error into the alignment, that's why they put a HUGE metal beam there with a bolt through it saying "don't go below here!" Stranger still is Konus has a headquarters in... Miami!



DJ

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DJ on 2002-10-05 12:08 ]</font>