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)
.
Any and all help is appreciated!!