Telescope Reviews: Polar Home and Max Elevation for LXD75 models

Hi folks,
I've got a dog *BLEEP* into ice cream project going where I redid the motor mounts and shaft couplings on a Meade 4504 GEM in an effort to get rid of the incredibly backlash rich stock setup. (Pics in the ATM forum under "Frankenscope").

I made new brackets and eliminated the screwball drive couplers on each axis. The backlash is now entirely limited to the worm/gear interface, where it belongs. And actually, it's working better than I expected while carrying an ETX70 OTA.

I'm running it with a 497 handset using LXD75 mount parameters with the correct gear ratios entered. Works pretty well, goto's are good (way better than the ETX base in polar mode), and it handles meridian crossings fine also, pauses, swings the OTA over the pole, and changes RA slew direction. Pretty sweet.

I am getting tired of the clearance warnings, I managed to eliminate all interference problems, nothing hits anything anywhere, so I don't need the warnings. Oh well.

Since I'm new to dealing with a GEM on Autostar, a couple issues..

1) Max Elevation warning. Got this trying to get to NGC6946 from the Autostar planetarium suite via remote cable. Drops the serial connection and blows up.

However ,when I enter the same target manually in the handset, it goes right there. I tried to modify the Max Alt numbers in the handset, but it won't let me enter anything higher than 70 degrees. whassup with that?

2) Polar Home...anyone got a nice simple geometric style solution for setting this up? On the ETX, I have a small bubble level in my kit, for polar home I'd lay it across the forks and level them up, then slew N until slightly past polaris, near the center of the that faint triangle it forms with two fainter stars. That's about where the NCP is.

With the GEM though, I don't have any tricks yet. What I did do was try resting the level on the flat which supports the RA worm shaft, and I leveled this...which should in theory result in a vertical counterweight shaft.

Then do I just slew in dec to near polaris as described, or should I attempt to use a straight edge or something to insure the cradle is at 90 deg N?

With the ETX this was simple...rest a square across the top of the fork deck and move the OTA until it's squared up. With the GEM, the slick trick of how to insure the mechanical orthogonality is one I don't have yet. The setting circles are total *BLEEP*, so any method that uses them is a no go.

It all boils down to this...what is the secret to getting it all squared up so that I can get proper mechanical polar alignment without relying on Autostar to make up for mechanical errors in alignment?

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"Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use." Mark Twain