Unbalanced – Not!

Well, after spending a lot of time remachining the bar on which I mount the cameras to give me better control over where they are mounted left-right, I concluded I didn’t have a balance problem to start with. The pier is not vertical so when the counterweight bar settled it appeared I was overweight on one side but in fact I was fine. But I do have much better control over the balance now.

I also spent some time messing with the mounting plate on the MI-250 and finally tapped a new set of holes to be able to mount a standard Losmandy saddle. Of course, I didn’t mount a standard Losmandy saddle, I mounted a Robin Casady saddle.

I also attacked the declination assembly (okay, not really attacked) to try to reduce the friction when turning. For all I messed around with stuff that was probably better left alone, I came away with a better understanding of how it’s put together. Adjusting the tension turned out to be simple, at the bottom of the declination assembly, just above where the counterweight bar screws in (actually, just above where the encoder is located) is a large nut. I just had to loosen it slightly. You can actually overtighten it by hand and make the declination axis too stiff. I had to remove the cover over the encoder to get access to it, but the end result is that I have easier motion in declination.