Thank you so much for all the replies!
Ok, so to answer your questions:
Three questions that will be useful in helping you.
1) What is the focal length of the guide scope or OAG system you are using?
2) What guide camera are you using?
3) How do your stars actually look.
The first 2 questions give insight in the setting you have for things like min move.
Question 3 is the really important one. The graph can look bad, but the stars can look fine in the image. We sometimes get too wrapped up looking for perfection. Some days my guiding is worse than other days. I always look at the subs before I worry too much about the guiding.
J.
I'm using a SkyWatcher Startravel 80, with a focal length of 400mm and a ZWO asi 120mm as guide camera. The stars become unfortunately somewhat oblong due to this behavior.
What is your procedure for polar alignment? Bad PA can cause this. Do you have a permanently mounted telescope, or do you set up each time? Good polar alignment can eat up imaging time if you have to set up each time. PoleMaster, according to reports on this site, has made dramatic improvements in this regard.
I set up each time and only use the polar scope for polar alignment, maybe tonight I can try the drift align on phd2 to see if the problem gets better. I was thinking about the PoleMaster, it could be my next purchase 
Welcome to Cloudy Nights. Thoughts.
DEC guiding and RA guiding are completely different. With a good polar alignment, you don't need much DEC guiding at all.
How much is the load?
The RA shows wild swings on both sides, and it can take several corrections to even get it started going back the right way. Assuming the mount is not overloaded, my first guess would be that something is loose.
If you gently (gently!) hold the counterweight shaft at the bottom and move it back and forth (gently!), how much free play do you feel? Best is barely perceptible, maybe a thousandth of an inch or three is still OK. If it's loose, find out why.
If you imbalance the scope just a bit to the east (about 1/2 inch on the counterweight is usually good), the weight is pressing against the motion of the RA. That takes up backlash. That should make most or all of the corrections in RA going the same way.
More aggressiveness on RA could help.
The load should not be a problem, since there is still significant room for the two counterweights (and the mount's load capacity is higher than the weight of my equipment).
When moving the counterweight shaft it does move a bit... maybe 2-3 mm, so that could actually be a problem.
Are you using a GEM? Do you feel like it's accurately balanced? I would agree that poor counterweight balancing on a GEM can cause poor guiding. I just had large RA spikes on my PHD2 graph last night..... when close to/passing my Meridian. I was using an older Meade 8 in. SCT on my Titan mount. I'm going to float a thread regarding this..... possible mirror shift..... change in weight distribution when passing the Meridian? In my case, my RA guiding was excellent before and after being in the vicinity of the Meridian.
Yeah it's a GEM, how careful do you think should you be when balancing? I don't spend too much time on it, I just make sure that it takes approximately the same effort to move both directions.
This is what works for me with my GEM. First as mentioned you want the best basic manual leveling and basic alignment/pointing your tripod can get. Then mount the head and hook everything up. Then go to the brain icon and click on that, Then click on the camera tab and input your guide cameras pixel size. Then click on the guide tab and input the focal length of your guide scope. Then go over to the calibration step calculator a click on that and then input that calculated number under the calibration step size. The carefully re-balance your rig and as mentioned if using a GEM go just slightly east heavy to mesh the gears properly. Then run a calibration and do a very careful drift alignment and manually adjust the mount. After the DA at this point I do a few slew and syncs triangulating to at least 3 stars on the east side of the meridian.(I do this because of my model mount and the fact that I don't do a meridian flip when imaging I just re-balance slightly) using CDC to fine tune and that's pretty much it. Go to your object and start guiding. You should have a pretty good guiding gragh..Balance is key.
Thanks! I'll try that tonight!
