Well, at the age of 47 I had the sudden realization that I wanted a telescope, or better yet, that I had wanted a decent telescope ever since I was young but just had not gotten around to it due to life and work. Nevertheless, I looked all around and settled on a 8" Celestron SCT on an Evolution Mount. Purchased it second hand from a seller on Ebay that advertised the scope and mount as "practically new" in December of last year. When the scope and mount arrived I was able to set it up easily, align it using the user alignment with Starsense and enjoyed using it for many hours. While there were some strange moments and issues I had with alignments that I attempted with the Lense cap on the Starsense camera, the experience was definitely adequate for my desire. And then suddenly one night shortly after alignment, the mount began to act very strangely. It began attempting to slew to the left and upwards to head towards whatever target I had selected and then suddenly began going back and forth with a rather jerky motion as if it was running into resistance and then attempting the slew again and again. I intervened after about 3-4 failed attempts for this thing to slew to the target and I shut off the power to it. Once I reengaged the power the azimuth slewing sounded very labored and finally would no longer slew at all. The only other indicator of anything strange for me during this process was the fact that very regularly my hand control would give me a warning that the battery level was low when I was able to quickly confirm that counter to that the battery showed a high level of charge.
I contacted Celestron and was told that very often local electronics repair technicians can repair these mounts without having to ship them across the country.
So, I found a electronics repair service somewhat close to my home and the gentleman seemed eager and capable to repair it, per our conversations.
Long story short, he got the mount back to me within a month. It aligned perfectly, found objects with more accuracy than I had yet experienced with the mount and I was as happy as a clam for the first night and a half.
Second night, it was'nt but 20 minutes into my viewing session before same dreaded behavior began to occur through the mount.
Spoke with the repair guy and he asked me to bring it back in. Well, now it's been a month and a half and I have not heard from him. I am contemplating just biting the bullet and sending the mount from my home in Alabama to California for Celestron to repair it.
But, before I did that I just wanted to drop my issue into this forum so that in case one of you ladies or gentlemen may recognize the symptoms of my issue and be able to give me a little insight into any approaches towards resolution that you might have.
I actually work at a Fire Protection Company with many mechanically minded people around. A good friend of mine here, whom is a jack of many trades, has informed me that he can do all kinds of soldering work and feels confident that if we could determine what is wrong with the mount that we could likewise repair it.
Considering that I purchased the setup second hand, I'm open to this potential.
Again, just wanted to check and see if any of these symptoms rang a bell with any of you.
Thank You For any insight you may be able to offer.
Aaron
