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Attached is a photo of my RA drive. Its an ETX-105. The only visible problem is too much grease, but that's not a fatal issue. There are no chipped teeth, burrs, or anything else visible that could cause the problem.
I watched run it for several minutes, then turned the scope off and moved it by hand. Moving it by hand, everything appears smooth. When electronically driven, every now and then, for no reason I can see, it starts oscillating back and forth for about a second, then resumes moving (and corrects itself). It does not happen at regular intervals - sometimes it happens 5 times in 10 seconds, sometimes the drive runs smooth for minutes at a time. Seems to me like it could be an electronic issue.
Do you know much about the new Autostar feature, "[drive] percent"? It corrects for backlash and "looseness" (the gears have to move a little before they start moving the scope) in the drive when manually slewing. I've gotten good results with it fixing issues like "creep after beep" and slow response times, but could that have anything to do with the tracking rate? Perhaps I need to play with those values some more...
I think I'll call Meade tech support to see what they have to say.
I watched run it for several minutes, then turned the scope off and moved it by hand. Moving it by hand, everything appears smooth. When electronically driven, every now and then, for no reason I can see, it starts oscillating back and forth for about a second, then resumes moving (and corrects itself). It does not happen at regular intervals - sometimes it happens 5 times in 10 seconds, sometimes the drive runs smooth for minutes at a time. Seems to me like it could be an electronic issue.
Do you know much about the new Autostar feature, "[drive] percent"? It corrects for backlash and "looseness" (the gears have to move a little before they start moving the scope) in the drive when manually slewing. I've gotten good results with it fixing issues like "creep after beep" and slow response times, but could that have anything to do with the tracking rate? Perhaps I need to play with those values some more...
I think I'll call Meade tech support to see what they have to say.
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