weird tracking C5

I bought a Celestron C5+ that lacks the hand paddle. According to the
Celestron manual the scope should function just fine without it. I've set
the wedge to my northern latitude, leveled and aligned to north per the
book. When I turn on the clock drive the RA drift of viewed objects speeds
up, stars do not remain stationary as expected. Scope rotation with the
motor on is east to west. Is there a secret handshake for operating a C5,
or do I have a circuit board problem?

Scope rotation with the
motor on is east to west. Is there a secret handshake for operating a C5,
or do I have a circuit board problem?

Hi:

Oh, one thing...how fast is "fast"? I've seen a couple of Celestron scopes of
this vintage that would go into their higher slewing speed for no apparent
reason (this speed is normally accessed with the hand paddle by holding down
one RA button and pressing the opposite RA button). You can hear the motor
"wind up" during these higher speed slews, while tracking is basically silent.
If this is the case, the scope must be serviced by Celestron.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

Warren wrote:
I bought a Celestron C5+ that lacks the hand paddle. According to the
Celestron manual the scope should function just fine without it. I've set
the wedge to my northern latitude, leveled and aligned to north per the
book. When I turn on the clock drive the RA drift of viewed objects speeds
up, stars do not remain stationary as expected. Scope rotation with the
motor on is east to west. Is there a secret handshake for operating a C5,
or do I have a circuit board problem?

Well, let's make sure the simple stuff is taken care of. If you polar
align the scope, and you face the wedge dial, you should be facing south.
Is that so?

Secondly, the RA dial should slowly (1 rev per sidereal day) turn
clockwise. Using the markings on the dial, you should be able to figure
this out in a few minutes. Is that so?

If both of these things check out, we'll try some other things.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

Warren wrote:
do I have a circuit board problem?

If it turns out that you do have a circuit board problem, I think I have
a spare lying around somewhere.

Best,
Stephen

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"Warren" writes:

I bought a Celestron C5+ that lacks the hand paddle. According to the
Celestron manual the scope should function just fine without it. I've set
the wedge to my northern latitude, leveled and aligned to north per the
book. When I turn on the clock drive the RA drift of viewed objects speeds
up, stars do not remain stationary as expected. Scope rotation with the
motor on is east to west. Is there a secret handshake for operating a C5,
or do I have a circuit board problem?

My new Celestar 8 arrived (ca 1992) in much the same condition. I found
that if I set the switch to indicate that I'm in the Southern
hemispere, (although I'm actually in the Northern), that the scope
tracked just fine. If your scope has a hemisphere switch, try putting
it on the "wrong" setting, and see whether that fixes the problem.

Since the workaround was so easy, I never bothered to try to get the
problem fixed. (Besides I had sent 2 scopes back to the dealer due to
bad optics before I got this one, and the optics on this one were fine,
I decide to declare victory and withdraw from the fray.)

Good luck.