Pryde I am using the HEQ5 with SynScan at the moment.
OK, noted. I will try SynScan later today. Except for the Passthrough stuff, SynScan and Celestron protocols are virtually identical.
By the way, one of the parameters that I also did not fiddle with is the side of the pier when you start out.
I will try to see if I can force the side of the pier to be different when I experiment later. I can understand why some mounts will not move if the pier side causes a slew to cross the Meridian (a GOTO with OTA on different side of a pier causes the mount to do a Meridian flip, and that is another reason ASIAIR has to use slewing to turn the RA axis by 60 degrees instead of using a GOTO. The problem is that MountSim will not not inhibit movement, so the physical mount may freeze, but MountSim will still move (virtual mount, no OTA to hit the pier :-).
We definitely don't want a Meridian flip when doing polar alignment since the flip turns the Declination motor too, and not just by a little bit.
"By the way, as a side note, the ASIAIR does not execute a Meridian Flip -- the mounts do that. All ASIAIR does for Meridian flipping is to wait for an object to cross the Prime Meridian, and then execute a GOTO to the same RA,DEC coordinate. Once the object is west of the Meridian, the mount will execute a Meridian Flip when asked to do a GOTO, if it finds that the OTA is on the wrong side of the pier for the object -- if object is East of the meridian, the OTA has to be West of the pier, and vice versa). All ASIAIR does for Meridian flipping is to issue GOTO commands at the proper time -- that is why Local Sidereal time (or Longitude + UTC + UTC offset) is so darn important when it comes to Meridian Flipping."
Another aside... I am also planning to do a test with polar
alignment accuracy with different declination angles. I am in conversation in a different thread on how to polar align when the NCP is a little below the roofline or horizon, and that requires a starting and ending declination angle that is many degrees from the pole (ASIAIR allows up to 30 degrees). But my early experiments with the simulator shows that the polar error becomes larger with increasing declination from the pole; I just did not record the number. So, once I set the camera up pointed carefully at the center of MountSim's window (I have a target that I can turn on or off to line up with the ASIAIR crosshairs), I might as well try to kill two birds with one stone.
I’ll carry on playing with it while its daylight here (England)
Ah, here is the west coast of the Colonies, it is only noon time at the moment :-).
Chen