The Mount

After finding my old mount was deceased I purchased what look to be an upgraded like-for-like replacement. The SkyWatcher EQ3-2 Pro Go-To mount.

The mount arrived promptly so I got assembling, which didn’t take too long, and hooked it up to the power. Sweet I thought it was working, lets’s update all the firmware and make sure everything is as up-to-date as it could be.

Well, that didn’t go to plan, there was no serial cable in the box and laptops have moved on since I last did this. No DB-9 ports anymore. A bit of Googling led me to a USB to Serial adapter cable perfect for the job and typically as per the UK it was cloudy so there it sat.

The next day the cable arrived and hooked everything up to the PC, download the software and firmware and updated everything, but still cloudy so no outside action on that day.

Clear skies!!! Well sort of, but enough for me to test the new mount with my C8. Set everything up in the garden, and spent an hour trying to polar alignment. Once aligned I went through the setup process on the handset, date, time, longitude and latitude. Found a great app for my iPhone called GPS Status for that information.

Eventually got to the star alignment, picked a nice bright star and sent the command to slew. Well of it went, quietly moving toward the star, then passed it and then passed it some more before stopping miles away from the target. Must be me setting up daylight saving wrong or my location wrong. Powered off and started again, went through the settings with a fine-toothed comb this time, started the star alignment and it missed again. Did this for an hour or so before giving up, packing everything away.