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Ok, so I finally got the scope and have had 3 good nights to try it out. Night #1: Just wanted to try out the optics and see if the GOTO worked.........it didn't! You tell it to go to Sirius and it would be way off. So, I go to the mighty ETX site for help.

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Sorry about the tripod breaking. Call Meade and arrange for a replacement, and in the future be very careful not to overtighten.

As for go-to? Generally it's a matter of experience. My own PE does not always place objects dead center in a 26-mm eyepiece, but they are almost always somewhere in the field of that eyepiece, and I mean any object from horizon to horizon. Some tips?

--Drive training: use a _distant_ terrestrial object, and be careful to do both altitude and azimuth training. The way it is set up in the menu, it's easy to do one and not the other. For best results, use a crosshair reticle eyepiece.

--Use a good, strong external 12vdc battery to power the scope.

--Be careful about alignment star centering. A crosshair reticle eyepiece is a big help.

--Make sure you are centering the CORRECT alignment star. "I think that's it" is not good enough.

--When you set in location in the HC, use "city name" rather than zipcode. Don't know why that makes a difference, but it does.

--Make sure the scope is properly set in home position THAT IS DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE TYPE OF ALIGNMENT YOU ARE DOING. I suggest you stick to LNT Easy Align, which means you point the control panel west, loosen the aziumuth/RA lock, rotate the tube counterclockwise until it hits the hard stop, and lock it back down.

--Naturally, make sure time, time-zone, and daylight savings time status are set correctly.

The ETX has a learning curve, but once you get with the program, you will find it is an amazing little machine...I love mine:

http://cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1807

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Uncle Rod

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Choosing and Using a New CAT
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