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BRisley
sage
Reged: 09/04/06
Posts: 345
Loc: SW Florida
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Picked a 60mm Tasco Starguide up for $15 locally off CL. Figured I wouldn't loose much since it has a red dot finder, moon filter and some cheap eyepieces that I could use with my school scopes. Comes with a Nexstar GT style hand controller, but from what I am reading, this is the very first version. Anyone have any experience with this mount or the very first Nexstar GT controllers?
I did the level north thing, it wanted to go to Vega. Put the scope somewhere in the middle of the summer triangle, moved it to Vega and aligned it. It then choose Altair, proceeded to run into the mount! After playing with it different options for an hour, on the last tries it did the same thing with Vega, then when it went to Altair (after telling it to skip over Capella) it went somewhere near Enif. I then centered it on Altair and aligned. It appeared happy. Told it to go to Alberio, it went south and east of Altair!
Could I have some sort of encoder problem?
(I know I can buy a newer Celestron hand controller for it that is programmable, but I really don't want to at this time, the plan was for this to join the school scope ranks as it only cost $15)
Brian
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3 C-8's (2 OT 72/80 and SPC-8)
8" f5 Dob
Meade 4450 on EQ-2
Meade 4501 on EQ-2
Tasco 4.5" on EQ-2
Tasco Starguide 60GT
C-90/Cometron Sky Scanner 80 mounted tandem in a C-8 Fork
Cometron CO-62
Meade 11x80 Bino
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jrcrilly
Refractor wienie no more
Reged: 04/30/03
Posts: 25206
Loc: NE Ohio
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Those worked pretty well. I think I still have a couple lying around somewhere. I've never seen one with subtle encoder troubles; they appear to either work or to not work.
The modern handboxes aren't compatible, so you'll be using that one.
I'd fiddle with it indoors so you can see what it's doing. Tell it that it's sometime after dark and align to where you know the stars would be at that time. Then if it doesn't work properly you can recheck your user information (time, date, location) and figure out why it didn't work.
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John C
Urban Observatory
A&M/Astreya 76mm F/6 APO
TMB/LOMO 80mm F/7.5 APO
Tak FSQ-106N F/5 APO
Meade 178ED F/9 "APO"
Meade ETX-125AT
C14
Teeter 20" F/3.8 truss Newt w/ServoCat
NJP, GPDX/SS2KPC, CG5-GT
ST-10XME, DSI Pro
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BRisley
sage
Reged: 09/04/06
Posts: 345
Loc: SW Florida
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Did experiment inside first, seemed to be ok once I used AM/PM vs 24 hour. (It was trying to use Sirius/Canopus at 9pm here when I entered it in 24 hour mode!)
It seems to slew around fine, no hiccups.
It just doesn't seem to move anything near what it should. Have tried several different models and have entered both city and lat long positions. Have saved and not saved locations.
(I have never had good luck with goto's, have a DH mount with a 497 (first try with it was not good!) and tried DS motors on a SP as a roboscope with the 497, couldn't get it to work either.
(Computers normally behave quite well for me!  )
Brian
--------------------
3 C-8's (2 OT 72/80 and SPC-8)
8" f5 Dob
Meade 4450 on EQ-2
Meade 4501 on EQ-2
Tasco 4.5" on EQ-2
Tasco Starguide 60GT
C-90/Cometron Sky Scanner 80 mounted tandem in a C-8 Fork
Cometron CO-62
Meade 11x80 Bino
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BRisley
sage
Reged: 09/04/06
Posts: 345
Loc: SW Florida
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OK, found some things out. Oldest version HC should not use model to select, gotta use Custom and enter values.
(Why this was ever released this way?  )
Tried again, now have fairly accurate gotos. Didn't use the scope, just the finder, but am now real close.
If someone has an extra older Nexstar GT hand control that supports the 2 star alignment, I would be interested in it. It should work with this scope and support more options and fix major bugs!
Brian
--------------------
3 C-8's (2 OT 72/80 and SPC-8)
8" f5 Dob
Meade 4450 on EQ-2
Meade 4501 on EQ-2
Tasco 4.5" on EQ-2
Tasco Starguide 60GT
C-90/Cometron Sky Scanner 80 mounted tandem in a C-8 Fork
Cometron CO-62
Meade 11x80 Bino
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jrcrilly
Refractor wienie no more
Reged: 04/30/03
Posts: 25206
Loc: NE Ohio
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Quote:
OK, found some things out. Oldest version HC should not use model to select, gotta use Custom and enter values.
Oops. I'm sorry - that was the first thing I should have asked about. It was, by far, the most common support issue we used to see in the various astro discussion boards. It's been a long time, though.
At least it should work for you now! 
--------------------
John C
Urban Observatory
A&M/Astreya 76mm F/6 APO
TMB/LOMO 80mm F/7.5 APO
Tak FSQ-106N F/5 APO
Meade 178ED F/9 "APO"
Meade ETX-125AT
C14
Teeter 20" F/3.8 truss Newt w/ServoCat
NJP, GPDX/SS2KPC, CG5-GT
ST-10XME, DSI Pro
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