just trying to improve my guiding with an AVX

My total guiding accuracy fluctuates between 0.7" and 2.0"

I know I have been calibrating guiding wrongly (I calibrated every time I slewed to another target)

But I would like to fix any mechanical issues first.

andrea tasselli:
1. Show us the guiding log
2. What stepper do you have in the AVX (shaft diameter even better)
3. From that I can advise you on the next steps

1. Guiding log is gone; I usually delete it and everything else on the flash drive to get a clean start again (once I transfer the subs to the PC), which I know is a mistake, but I'm sort of careless, and I didn't think the logs were important.

2. Yeah, I'll take a whole bunch of measurements.

3. thank you

Sky is clear; I could take the scope outside tonight to get another guiding log, but can you tell me where I'm supposed to point the scope to do guiding calibration? I'm still not sure where I should point.

I have a direct view to the zenith, and north, northwest, north northwest, and some northeast

but south (sadly) is blocked by my big fat house, and south is where all the nicer galaxies are too.

but anyway, where should I point to do guiding calibration? what do you do?

very sorry

I found out I accidentally stripped one of the tiny hex screws holding the gear on the DEC motor shaft.

So it's now unremovable, and no adjustments can be made for DEC.

So I can now forget about new gears and belts (sorry if someone was looking on this thread for answers to replacing gears on AVX mount)

But it's fine for me. I'll have to deal with what I have.

And I'm kinda demotivated now, so I give up on changing the RA motor gear; I don't want to strip the hex screw on that gear too.

but hey,

I was able to put a drop of SuperLube on RA and DEC gears after I cleaned some blubbery lube gunk that was on a RA motor gear (and the motors kind of sound smoother now, idk, might be my imagination)

and I now know how to correctly do guiding calibration 

I'll report back, after the clouds go away, if my guiding improved.





Just one question:

do you approve my guiding settings, or should I change something?


Calibration step size = 218ms
Max RA duration = 2000ms
Max DEC duration = 2000ms
DEC mode: Auto
Guide exposure length = 1s
ASI174mm mini (guide cam) Gain = 400 (which is the max)


I have a 950mm newt with a 533 camera, and using an OAG with the 174.