On Mar 7, 2020, at 8:26 AM, Wayne Hixson via Groups.Io <wayneh9026@...> wrote:

Congratulations Terri, hope you get a chance to try it soon under dark skies, which I’m also impatiently awaiting. I’d planned to do more setup outside today until the dry forecast mysteriously changed to Chance of Showers. (Thinking Seattle should be renamed “Chance of Showers”. Somewhat surprisingly we have a pretty large and active astronomy community here and a great local retailer in Cloud Break Optics).

It’s straightforward to modify the driver settings when you go to APCC. You’ll have APCC create a couple virtual ports (George recommended higher COM ports like COM21 and COM22,  to avoid potential conflicts). Then click the Use APCC Virtual Port box in the driver and select COM21 for example. You’ll then launch APCC to connect to the mount 

I have a partially occluded setup under the eaves of my house and complex horizon of trees and houses, so I like APCC for its Horizon and Meridian mapping and meridian flip flexibility. I’ve also used it with its Horizon module to track asteroids and comets. 

Congrats again, looking forward to more reports. 

Wayne

On Mar 7, 2020, at 7:18 AM, Terri Zittritsch <theresamarie11@...> wrote:



Thanks guys, I have received the mount and it’s all together and up and running.    I’ve installed the v2 ascom driver and gotten that working with cartes du ciel.   This was all pretty fast and no troubles.   I use EQMOD so it’s all pretty similar.  I’ve yet to try SGP but expect that will work fine.  

I followed the setup instructions for the v2 driver which made that all pretty simple.  

Where things get a bit confusing is with the APCC setup.   I’ve read Ray’s instructions for APCC after having already installed And setup the V2 driver and think they imply a different setup of the v2 driver with virtual ports instead of the com port I used with the built in FTDI chip In the GTOCP5.   I’m sure it’s not  a huge deal to resolve, it’s just confusing.   Right now I’m thinking my first outside work will be with the V2 driver and SGPro and just seeing how well it tracks and runs.   Given I use an ASI 1600 cmos camera my exposures are typically 5 minutes or less.  

Besides the pointing model aspect of APCC/APPM I’m not very clear on what this software does for the user, but I’ve only read the setup so far so need to dive into it more.    

In general the mount is very solid and has zero play that I can feel, so it exudes quality craftsmanship.
The counterweight bar is heavy and balances my stowaway, without a weight, when it has no accessories or imaging setup.    I’m wondering if I need a 5 lb weight to tune the balance for the light scopes.   So far I have only purchased heavier weights.  

So far, very happy with what I have, the real smiles will come when I can experience very good tracking.  I just need some cooperative weather now.

Terri