bit of good news

That is good news, Simon. FLO seem to be pretty good if there is a problem, in my experience. Glad that you should be back in business soon!

I assume you won't be sorted by Saturday... but you'll be welcome to look through my scope again on Saturday evening, should the skies be clear!

Hi Mike

yeah I doubt I will get it back by Saturday usally returns/fixes take up to 2 weeks that's what I'm working on anyway if its sooner its a bonus 😀

Saturday I will be along if its on for sure and thanks

Ok just updating you all here

I got my mount back Friday 🙂 Unfortunately they couldn't find anything wrong with it 🙁 but did give me some advice like use google maps for the lat/lon co-ords instead of my phones app and apparently its normal drift in this type of mount THIS VIDEO

And only gets worse with higher mag eyepiece which I was quite surprised about as a tracking mount I thought would do that but I was wrong 🙁

So i'am thinking of once my kids school trip is paid for I will start saving for a EQ mount wont be one of the £400 or > ones though so if anyone's got any advice of what the best budget EQ mount would be suitable I would love to hear it

Hi Simon,

It does seem very odd that objects are drifting out of view so quickly. How long does it take for an object to drift out of view if you are using the 20mm eyepiece?

As regards EQ mounts... well... you get what you pay for, in my experience. Maybe something like the Skywatcher EQ3-2 Pro would be good? You can pick this up for less than £400 now. Reasonably portable and the same go-to system used on higher end mounts. Might be worth looking at.

Hi Mike,

With the 20mm its a bit better yes but with any eyepiece lower to give me any details then It gets tricky funny thing is I bought this setup so I wouldn't have to manually track it has to be something i'm doing so will try getting the lat/lon from google maps as they suggested and see if that helps.

indeed the Skywatcher EQ3-2 Pro would be great its £385 from FLO so might be out of my price range for now but we will see

Thanks for the suggestions thou 🙂

It doesn't sound right, Simon. Some drift, I'd expect... but over the course of minutes... so you should be able to keep the object in the eyepiece for a reasonable amount of time.

FYI, my latitude and longitude settings are:

Lat: 51 degrees 28 minutes 26.3 seconds N (decimal 51.47397° N)
Long: 0 degrees 0 minutes 58.3 seconds E (decimal 0.01619444° E)

I suspect your latitude and longitude won't be much different.

I just had a quick look at the manual online (which I think is the same as your model). It looks like you enter the longitude first... which is unusual... I wonder if this is what is causing the problem? At this time of year, you will also need to make sure that daylight saving time is ON. Also, make sure that you are entering an accurate time.

Hi Mike

Yeah I had the same feeling that's why I sent it off

Indeed my model needs the longitude entered first I have done a google map co-ord now and they did seem out by around a degree which I hope is the reason but will test them when I can as for home I will use

lon = 0, 5, 47

Lat = 51, 28, 46

and for Talbot Place

lon = 0, 0, 13

Lat = 51, 28, 46

so hopefully it will help we will see 😀

oh and yes I always make sure I use the correct time and daylight saving is on

but thanks for all the help here

Ok bit of an update

I wasn't to happy with the explanation of the engineer especially as I tried all his suggestions and Mike's comments just reaffirmed my suspicion's and  it still seemed wrong to me at least  so I got back in touch FLO and they agreed with me and sent it back  this time a different engineer had a looked and confirmed the mount was faulty they have replaced  it and I should get it back Monday so hopefully (fingers crossed)

I should be back in business 😀

Glad that this is finally looking like it will be sorted, Simon. A shame it's taken so long, but at least it was during the right time of year!

Hope the replacement mount works OK.

Hi Mike,

Yes I hope so to should be here today so hopefully I can test it do it some solar viewing if the clouds clear up lol

and to double make sure I wasn't getting any handset/mount power problems which could effect the tracking I got myself one of these AS WELL