Try sending it to Park 3 and see where it goes. Maybe you have misremembered Park 4...

-Christopher Erickson
Observatory engineer
Waikoloa, HI 96738
www.summitkinetics.com
   

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 6:25 AM Stuart <stuart.j.heggie@...> wrote:

All - my AP900GTO CP4 has been idle for over a year and with power OFF. I am putting it back into operation and am having a weird time getting the scope to find targets (like at all).

• When I power up, the hand controller signals that I am set to EXT and to hit MENU to use the hand controller. I do that.
  
• Then it prompts for my Location (I only have one): I select '1' and GOTO
  
• I checked the Lat/Long and it is my home location. I adjusted it very slightly as the mount is in a slightly different location than it was).
• I checked the Time and Date and they were off by a few days (odd?) - I corrected them both.
• At this point, I loosen both clutches fully, signal I want the mount to go to Park 4 and hold the mount while it whirs away and when it is done, I use a bubble level to position it in Park 4. I tighten the clutches gently, issue a second Park 4 command, check the level then lock in down firmly (hand tightening only of course)

THEN the weird part: I hit menu till I'm at the top menu, I select Object then pick some object I know is up in the sky (I'm in a dome shielded from any risk of pointing at the sun and the scope is covered anyway). Let's pick Venus for example (tho it failed on the moon when the moon was up also). In most cases the hand controller declares the object I can see naked eye (Venus, the Moon, Betelgeuse, ...) is below the horizon. Or it slews and slews way off the target.

Is it possible my hand controller db is corrupted from the long time powered down? 

Stuart Heggie

http://www.stuartheggie.com/

--

Stuart
http://www.astrofoto.ca/stuartheggie/