Re: [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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Last night was the first night out with the 210xt and the gm-8.  It appears
the 210xt is not plug n play.  You need to use a splitter to plug in both
hand controller and 210xt but when you do that the hand controller won't
work.  So now, how do you center stars without slow motion controls.
Alternatively, you could plug in one at a time but that gets rather
ridiculous fumbling around in the dark with all sorts of wires.  When I did
get it guiding it only lasted for about 5 minutes and the the corrections
became increasingly larger until it slid off the chip.  Someone at Losmandy
had indicated that the 201xt sends ra and dec corrections to the mount
simaltaineously but the Losmandy electronics can only process corrections
one at a time so the dec correction gets ignored.  Hence, after 15 or
twenty minutes there is a problem.

BTW, Losmandy had confirmed that it was the old Meade 201 that fried the
electronics on these mounts.  I asked him what the symptoms were such as
did it act erratically or inconsistantly.  No. It started smoking and you
could smell burnt wiring and it ceased (deceased) all functions.  There was
no in between.

I guess the only practicle solution left is to buy an ST-4?

John Wall