RE: Major Mark IV Problem

[aah@nofs.navy.mil]

I don't know about others, but I would rather have Tom
work on the mount problem now rather than delivering a
system with drive problems that may or may not be
easily fixed sometime in the future.  If that means a
delay for delivery, then so be it.

I seem to recall that there are boards (chips?) that
will convert a DC motor into a stepper lookalike; such
a system might have less vibration.

I'm surprised vibration is present since you are driving
the telescope with a cable...that usually damps everything.
One method of removing stepper vibration on amateur mounts
has been to use a chain drive to isolate the stepper.

Tom:  on future mailings of fits files, could you do me
a favor and upload the binary version to someplace like
storm or my anon ftp site?  My mailer does not handle
fits binary attachments well at all.  When I save the file
so that I can display it, it assumes text mode and screws
up the file.  Plus, I like to keep my mailbox as empty as
possible, and image attachments often get pretty large.

Arne