Author: Jussi Laasonen

I bought a GoTo upgrade for my EQ3-2 mount from Astroshop Warehouse Deals. The connectors for R.A. and Dec. cables are in inverse order with correct but upside-down labels. The defect appears not to affect the actual operation.

The Sky-Watcher upgrade kits do not contain installation instructions for the motors, and the handset manual was for a previous version. Fortunately, a blogger has provided self-made instructions, and Orion has a V5 hand controller manual. Orion also offers a manual for installing the motors, but the motors are different. Even so, the manual provides a couple of tips not mentioned in the blog: the setscrews in the gears should hit the flat part of the worm gear shaft, and the R.A. motor gears are more comfortable to align without the motor cover on the way. In the end, installing the kit was not too tricky, but getting the gears aligned required some trial and error.

To check if the device works properly, I made a dry using my iPhone and SkySafari as a telescope. On the first attempt, the GoTo was totally off, but after double-checking the setup (the controller wants the day and the month in reverse order), it was able to point to the general direction of the target. Later the sky cleared enough, and I was able to perform a real test. Unfortunately, no stars were visible, and I was not able to test alignment. Lunar tracking worked well enough for visual given the crude polar alignment.

So far, I have only used the hand controller, but Stellarium seems to be able to connect with the mount, and it should be possible to use SkySafari via SynScan Pro App for Windows. I am not sure if I want to go through the hassle of installing EQMOD at this point, but it has some exciting features like using a gamepad to control the mount or using any star for alignment.