Rotary table

 3/2/2025 -- Added a 4" rotary table on top of the Meade standard field tripod to improve azimuth adjustment.  Bolted an inexpensive Chinese aluminum EQ6 adapter plate on top of the table with five bolts.  The whole assembly screwed together onto the mount...then bolted the rotary table onto the top of the tripod.  A truly Franken-mount!

After installing the rotary table and the mount back on the tripod, mounted the counter weights and the 8" Meade LX10 SCT OTA and brought the setup out onto the deck. Roughly aligned with cellphone compass in the daylight hours and installed the Odroid and cables.  Powered up after dinner and used PHD2 on the odroid to check the polar alignment. Initial result was surprisingly close at -23" after several minutes of drifting. Adjusted the rotary table from an initial position of 6 to 6.5 and restarted the drift alignment in PHD2.  This resulted in the polar alignment error dropping to -5.6".  After an additional adjustment, shifted the rotary table to nearly 7 on the scale which was slightly too far of a correction...leading to a polar alignment error of ~1.2".  There is some (~0.5 on the rotary table scale) backlash when switching adjustment directions in the worm gear on the rotary table. Swung the mount back by ~0.1 units on the rotary table...which resulted in a near zero polar drift alignment error in PHD2.  Overall...compared to using the knobs...found this far preferable with less sticking and error in making adjustments. Temperature was 27.6F according to weewx weather station beside the mount...and the rotary table was not too sticky in these conditions with the mount fully loaded...which seems like a good test.