[APML]: Anyone Autoguiding a G-11 with a Pictor XT?

["John F. Wall" <jfw@spectranet.ca>]

The Astro-Photography Mailing List
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Well you guys now have me a little worried.  I just bought a GM-8 mount and
have a 201XT to use with it.  The original S&T review of the 201XT
indicated they just plugged it in and it worked fine.  I also checked out
MEades web page and they state that the 201XT can be used with any scope as
long as it has a telephone jack which the the GM-8 has.  I also had a quick
field test and the 201XT calibrated on first try and started guiding albeit
poorly because I had not set the Cr and Cd values for the OTA I was using.
But it did seem to function.

Are the problems mentioned below related to the 201XT or just for the 208XT
and up.

John Wall



At 10:14 PM 7/9/98 -0700, you wrote:
>The Astro-Photography Mailing List
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>
>> Has anyone had any success autoguiding a G-11 or GM-8 with a Pictor
208XT or
>> 216XT? A friend and I have been trying to get this to work without any
luck.
>> I'd like to know if it works for anyone before I waste any more time trying
>> to debug it.
>
>Are you using a relay box (or the Meade "solid state relay" box)
>between the Pictor and the G-11? If not that could be the
>problem. Pictor guiders have a voltage output rather than a relay
>output, and the voltage output has fried the mount electronics of
>many non-Meade mounts. Meade specifically states that you must
>not connect a Pictor guider directly to any non-Meade mount, else
>damage will result. 
>
>Having said all that, if you don't have the relay box you may not
>want to get it, but sell the guider instead. The relay box is
>ridiculously expensive (I paid something like $100 for mine) and
>it is a royal pain to hook up. There are point-to-point wiring
>directions, *but the wires are unlabeled*, so you have to trace
>each wire through to see which is which. At least that's how mine
>was; maybe they're packaging better instructions with them these
>days. 
>
>In my case, after spending the money and monkeying with all the
>wiring I found that the 201XT was a lousy autoguider, and I
>finally did what you call "the right thing": I got an ST-4. It
>took two seconds to plug into my two mounts (including my G-11),
>took only a few minutes to learn to use, and worked the first
>time I tried to use it. The ST-4 is simply a better mousetrap, in
>my humble (but now painfully experienced) opinion.
>
>Wil M.      
>mailto:wmilan@airdigital.com
>Astrophoto web site: http://www.airdigital.com/astrophoto.html
>---
>"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, 
>the moon and the stars which You have set in place, 
>what is Man that you are mindful of him, 
>or the son of Man that you care for him?"  -- Psalm 8
>
>