CG5-GT - 'There's No Place Like Home'
Just wanted to relate a glitch and solution.
New scope, the C8 on CG5-GT - been great so far. But a couple of days ago I was viewing the Moon in the afternoon. I left the mount tracking and turned out it was about 3 hours later I got back to the scope. It was semi-dark so I decided to a star alignment. I chose to send the scope to the 'Home' position using the option under the utilities menu, but I accidentaly chose the first option 'Set Home Position'. Didn't think much of it. But after powering off and beginning alignment, the initial stars were way off (more than 20 degrees away). Weird I thought, Its been quite accurate until now. Then I remembered accidentally resetting the home position. It should have nothing to do with alignment - just a convenient position you choose in which to park the scope. I tried a few more alignments and all were way off. Then I realised how slow the motors were running and realised I was nearly out of power - even though the Power Pack reported 'ready for use'.
Next day with a fully charged power pack I tried a virtual alignment in the garage. I stepped outside to check the real position of the rising Moon. Then I did a quick align (carefully pointing the mount north and levelling it) and picked 'Moon' from the GoTo Menu. The scope slewed in the general direction, but was way off again - about as far off as before. I tried two more times with no luck. (I also tried setting the 'home' position again with the scope and mount pointing north - but this seemed to have no effect on goto's).
I decided to do a factory reset as this would also reset the 'home' position (which I still suspected had something to do with the missed goto's). After the reset I 'Quick Aligned' again and this time the mount hit the target very close. Later that night I did this for real and hit the Moon and Saturn dead on with just a quick align (I do use the polar scope to set the mount). Since then the initial alignments have been very accurate.
Don't plan on setting the 'home' position again anytime soon!
Hope this helps anyone who runs into the same problem.
James
- HI James. I had a similar problem when I was initially learning the way around the CG5-GT mount. I made the mistake of accidentally setting a home position also but I managed to get it fixed by just setting the home position again when it was in the correct place. Thanks though I will keep what you said in mind about the Factory reset if I make the same mistake.
By 
