Posted inAstronomy Telescope Mods & Repair

Meade LX50 DEC Axis Issues

Hoo boy, did I have a sick DEC axis. I think I only began to notice it when I started guiding long-exposure shots as it was on the most part livable for the visual stuff.

I had a few problems:

  1. Reversing direction quickly back and forth several times would actually “crash” the LX50! The power led would start blinking and all I could do was power off, wait a few seconds and power on to get it to respond. Kind of like an operating system or two that I won’t mention here! 😉

  2. Speed of motion on the DEC axis had nothing to do with the RA axis. Either it was Speedy Gonzalez or the motor would actually come to a grinding (seriously — grinding) halt.

  3. When I reversed direction it would take a long time before whatever was in the FOV actually moved. It was like slack was being picked up somewhere in the tangent arm.

None of this is very good when you’re trying to guide a photo on a guide star you can barely see, and I won’t even go into what an autoguider will try to do…

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Posted inAstronomy Telescope Mods & Repair

Meade LX50 RA Axis Moves Slightly When Locked

This one really spooked me. I was finishing up for the night with a quick look at Orion. I aimed, locked the RA and DEC, and noticed that with the RA locked I could move the scope in a left-right motion very slightly. More or less half a centimeter of travel. Yikes!

I took the scope inside and plonked it on the kitchen table with both the RA and DEC axis UNLOCKED. (This bit is very, very important! When you lay the scope on its side, you’re putting pressure on parts that weren’t make to take a lot of weight. If you have an axis locked you could force the scope and really break something.)

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