Three Point Polar Alignment in NINA issues with new WD-20P

Questions
1

I just received my WD-20P a week ago and I’ve been working towards getting everything set up. All of the mechanical connections etc. have been done with little or no problem. Talking to it with Stellarium and NINA are seemingly working just fine, too. Next steps are polar alignment and then getting guiding working - now I’m having an issue!

Setup for this example is:
WD-20P
RedCat 51
OAG (Off Access Guiding)
Pegasus PowerBox Advance
Starfield 1000B portable pier

Software
Windows 11
NINA
PHD2

I haven’t really gotten to trying to tune PHD2, yet, as my issue is with getting my polar alignment done accurately with Three Point Polar Alignment (TPPA) in NINA, hence this post. I’ve attached 2 screen shots of the settings that may be where my problem is. If there are more settings that might be of interest, pleas let me know and I will post those.

The first, hopefully quick, question re the mount is how can I get tracking to stay on. This may or may not be related to getting my polar alignment ¶ set. It seems that the mount wants to keep turning it off - at least when I start - such that I have to monitor it?

The main issue is that as I am bringing it into polar alignment it seems to jump an awful lot. I get that the mount is new to me meaning the pitch of the adjustment screws will be different from the EQ6R-Pro I’m coming from, but that doesn’t seem to be it. Strangely, a few times after I have started the process and seemingly as I get it close, the mount slews from the west side of the pier to the same approximate position on the east side and then TPPA will tell me that I am off by as much as 1 degree as opposed to the minute or less than I was? When I believe that I am close to aligned (less than 30") and try using PHD2, PHD2 will tell me I am off by 10’ or more? Meaning that trying to get PHD2 setup properly isn’t really going to work well.

While I don’t pretend to be in expert in TPPA, I have used it with reasonable success with my EQ6. I’m a little fearful that I may have a setting inherited from using the EQ6 that just doesn’t jive with the WD-20P. And I’m a little unsure of why it has to switch sides of the pier once it has it’s three shots from the other side. Also, when I think I have it down and I run TPPA again as recommended, I would expect it to show it to be within maybe a minute or two but it will show me it’s off as much as 20’?? Yes, I have made sure that all is tightened down (pier to mount, etc.).

For whatever it’s worth, I have two other scopes and have tried it with my WO FLT-132 and the same issue(s)

TPPA1
TPPA11125×146 39.6 KB

TPPA2
TPPA2617×870 104 KB

.

Any and all help is appreciated!!

2

Have you gotten any advice from Warpastron? Makes me a bit nervous to see you posted this 9 days ago and no replies. I was going to buy the WD20P.

3

No, I haven’t. My understanding is that as this is their forum, they would be monitoring it? I admit I have not tried contacting them direct.

I have tried a couple of things since I first posted. Limited nights to try things, though have kept progress down, but the aligning seems to have improved. Things that I have done on the TPPA Options page were to turn Default East Direction to Off, and changed the Polar Alignment System from “None” to one of the options (right now I don’t recall which). As the posted settings were seemingly working OK with my EQ6R, I’m not sure of the difference but things are definitely improved.

Overall - and keep in mind I’ve only played with it now since the latter part of May - it does truly seem pretty solid. As I venture into the tracking that seems pretty good, too, but I haven’t tuned that much from PHD2’s Wizard settings. I do find it interesting that they haven’t taken the time to create a manual for the 20P. I contacted them before purchase and they said to use the one for the straight 20. For what truly should only take someone less than an hour, that doesn’t seem right. Any info I needed regarding the saddle connections had to be obtained by going back to their site and digging for specifications as opposed to having it all in one place. That’s not exactly looking at customer’s needs in my opinion.

FWIW, I also hadn’t posted anything in Cloudy Nights regarding this where there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable folks - I’ve lurked there for years! :wink:

4

Seems like for direct technical questions, it has to go through their Discord channel but I cannot find how to get an invite to that.