I purchased a SWSAGTI a few months ago, and overall have been quite happy with the unguided results, even using my Canon 600/4 lens. But there are a few things that might make polar alignment easier and more accurate for beginners.
- Check the scope alignment, mine came quite a bit out of alignment which resulted in less than optimal results. This is easily corrected during the day by loosening and tightening the three tiny grub screws on the polar scope while focusing on a target in the distance and making sure it remains centered while rotating the RA axis
- Check if the cross hairs are level when the mount head is level. Mine was off by 1.5 ticks on the clock, so I need to compensate every time I polar align.
- Add a bubble level to the mount head, since it's difficult to be sure the crosshairs are level in the dark, a bubble level on the mount head makes this super easy.
- If you regularly shoot from your own backyard (like I do) you may be able to orient the mount on your tripod so that it automatically faces north. We have tiles in a perfectly straight pattern, so I have aligned the SWSAGTI on the tripod so that when the back two legs of the tripod are on the line of the tiles, I am pointing directly North. So now as long as my tripod is level, Polaris is immediately in my field of view, needing only minor adjustment.
- I had an old 90 degree Canon angle-finder that doesn't fit any of my new cameras, but it did fit on an $39 adapter for the Polar Scope, so no more bending over when polar aligning, and this makes PA much easier and faster
- I use the Synscan Pro Iphone app, and I have found that in order to keep the SWSAGTI and the app in sync, if you make any adjustments by loosening the clutches it is best to turn off the mount, kill the app and restart the mount and then reconnect the app. Before realizing this I frequently had problems with the mount pointing being off when I used "GOTO". I recently had to uninstall the app and delete all data and reinstall, because I mount kept crashing into the hard stop. After resintalling it worked perfectly again.
