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The buttons weren't stuck and I WILL blame Orion. It's their name on the $1500 mount. When paying $1500 for something a plastic cap with latitude marks on it should be glued on correctly - and if not glued on correctly by some Chinese guy, QC should catch it.

And it's a shame if, as someone already posted, it seems Orion KNOWS about the time zone issue - and they're still shipping out new mounts without correcting the issue.

$1500 is A LOT of money - especially these days.

But I will note: The Orion Atlas is a superb mount, I'm just a little miffed about my current issues.

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Well, this is a very inexpensive price for a mount with these capabilities. As in any other industry (well, maybe outside the Pantex plant), QA does not mean every product gets QAed. And Orion, like most dealers, doesn't QA a thing. They just sell stuff.

Now as for your slewing problem, since you've been using this mount for a year, I assume this has just recently cropped up? If it doesn't move just a wee bit when you let up on a button, but a lot, the usual problem is power. If you are powering the mount from an AC adapter, try a battery. If you are using a battery, try a fully charged battery. Also, some mounts shipped with the incorrect power cord about a year ago. It fits too loosely...Orion would send you a new one if you'd a-called them. They would no doubt have fixed the latitude indicator as well if you'd called them.

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Well, your expectations must be a little lower then mine. If I pay whatever amount for a new product it should be as described.

Saying "well, it's an inexpensive price for it's capabilities" is just lame. That's like buying a new 2009 car and then having the engine not work and saying something to the manufacturer about it and them saying, "well, it's an inexpensive price for it's capabilities - if you wanted us to actually check that everything worked we would have charged you x-amount more."

This Atlas is new - got here 5 days ago. It's my second one. My first one I got last year - no issues with that one.

I can deal with the altitude indicator being off. When I do my Hypertune to it, I'll glue it back on correctly anyway. I don't "think" power was the issue. I had a fully charged 100AH deep cycle marine battery, but the cord might have come loose. I'm going out tonight so I'll see.

I'd like to thank everyone for their insight. And sorry if I seemed a little miffed in this post about the "inexpensive" comments. $1500 isn't inexpensive for any capibilities - if you're using the word inexpensive and $1500 in the same sentence you're making a lot more then me.

The Atlas EQ-G is still the best bang for the buck.

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Well, your expectations must be a little lower then mine. If I pay whatever amount for a new product it should be as described.

Saying "well, it's an inexpensive price for it's capabilities" is just lame. That's like buying a new 2009 car and then having the engine not work and saying something to the manufacturer about it and them saying, "well, it's an inexpensive price for it's capabilities - if you wanted us to actually check that everything worked we would have charged you x-amount more."

This Atlas is new - got here 5 days ago. It's my second one. My first one I got last year - no issues with that one.

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Sorry your Atlas didn't work out for you. OTOH, Orion is extremely good about fixing customer problems, so you might at least think about contacting them.

Whether I make more money than you is beside the point. The fact is that the next step up, the next group of mounts with capabilities similar to the Atlas, but _maybe_ _slightly_ better QA is 3000 US$.

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I got my new Atlas about two weeks ago and had the exact same problem. I called up Orion and the support person I spoke to had the answer immediately, so they must be aware of this issue. It's a bug in the hand controller.

Here's the deal: When you are selecting the time zone offset, it defaults to +0:00. So you cursor over to the plus and change it to a minus (using the up or down arrow buttons to toggle it) and then set the number of hours. Well, if you had used the down arrow button to change the plus to a minus, even though it looks like it's changed, the change to the sign doesn't get saved. So you end up with +5:00 instead of -5:00. If you go back through the setup again, you'll see that the timezone offset is +5:00. If you use the up arrow, the minus will actually get acknowledged by the hand controller. Since it has the correct value at that point, the alignment procedure will give you the appropriate set of stars, and you can proceed from there.

Very annoying, but at least you can get beyond it once you know the right thing to do.

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That was the fix. All I did was press up (instead of down) to change the "+" sign to a "-" sign and it saved my time as as -05:00.

I doubled checked and pressed down to change the + to a - and it didn't save it.

So, if any new Atlas owners come across this thread and have the same issues as me, the fix is as easy as pressing up instead of down. Though it shouldn't be like that and hopefully the new controller Orion is sending me doesn't have any of those issues.

I was out tonight for 4 hours and had no issues at all. There was no slewing issue like I had the other night. Tracking was spot on. I used my 12.5mm illuminated cross hair and did 5 minutes on Saturn and 5 on Sirius and there was little to no drift of any of the objects out of the center.

GoTo was spot on - Meaning I had a 5mm TMB planetary in the SN10 and when I slewed from Sirius to M42 to Saturn to Polaris to Arctus (sp?) they were all in the FOV is not spot on center.

Good polar alignment, leveling and weight balance do the trick. Spending an extra 5-10 minutes on those things and it will be a great observing (imaging too) night.

Next will be an Atlas Hypertune. I got my new bearings and spacers yesterday. I'm doing the altitude/azimuth mod also.

And I ordered a new Carbon Fiber OTA tube for my SN10. I'm getting the SN10 w/ the works from Bob McCourt at Deep Space Mods and Composites Not only will the tube be beautiful it'll be about 15lbs lighter. Now instead of pushing 50lbs on my Atlas I'll be around, maybe below, 35 lbs.

NEAF = New CCD camera

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I really wish that Synta would migrate the Atlas/HEQ-6 mounts over to a Celestron Nexstar firmware clone. Synscan simply isn't as mature or reliable. Why support two completely different firmware families when you own them both? Nexstar also has one valuable (to me) feature that Synscan lacks - the "Slew to RA and Dec" feature. This is a godsend for double star and variable star work beyond the teeny onboard double star and variable star catalogs. I end up using the User Defined Object feature in Synscan, but that's many more keystrokes, requires separate record keeping to identify what object has been assigned to each slot, and limits you to 25 targets at a time.

Beyond firmware issues, however, I've really enjoyed the Atlas and have used it ALOT without incident.

Regards,

Jim

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That was the fix. All I did was press up (instead of down) to change the "+" sign to a "-" sign and it saved my time as as -05:00.

I doubled checked and pressed down to change the + to a - and it didn't save it.

So, if any new Atlas owners come across this thread and have the same issues as me, the fix is as easy as pressing up instead of down. Though it shouldn't be like that and hopefully the new controller Orion is sending me doesn't have any of those issues.

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I really wish that Synta would migrate the Atlas/HEQ-6 mounts over to a Celestron Nexstar firmware clone. Synscan simply isn't as mature or reliable. Why support two completely different firmware families when you own them both? Nexstar also has one valuable (to me) feature that Synscan lacks - the "Slew to RA and Dec" feature. This is a godsend for double star and variable star work beyond the teeny onboard double star and variable star catalogs. I end up using the User Defined Object feature in Synscan, but that's many more keystrokes, requires separate record keeping to identify what object has been assigned to each slot, and limits you to 25 targets at a time.

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