AR127 / A6000 setup

This setup:

Scope: 127mm / 826mm

Degrees: 1.59° x 1.06°
Arcmin: 95.4 x 63.6

Setup steps:

• Plop down Mount
• Level Mount
• Attach AR127
• Balance, loading East
• Power up everything but the PI
• Set both location and time, as it seems to loose location.
• Make sure the USB cables are plugged in to the right ports on the PI
• Power up the PI
• Start PHD2
• Manually set the guiding to the AR127 focal length and aperture 
• Connect camera and mount
• Align using HS
• Polar align
• Make sure to choose a star as close to the pole as possible as close to the meridian and the celestial equator as possible:) 
• Focus the guide camera
• Calibrate PHD2 using a star near the equator (dec 0)
• Slew to target
• Re-calibrate if it looks like it's drifting
• Start guiding

Things to NOT do:

• Leave the cover on!
• Power up the PI before the mount
• Forget to balance 
• Forget to Load east
• Select guide star too close to Polaris
• Forget to manually switch INDI mount settings to the AR127 focal length and aperture 
• Plug the USB cables into the wrong ports of the PI
• NEVER use the RTC with the AVX!

Guiding Results:

• After some time I was able to have some OK guiding. One thing that I struggled with was what looks like periodic error. Even though I was using the PEC algorithm the PE seemed really large. I'm thinking that my settings for the PEC algorithm were actually causing PE. After some tweaks I was able to get it down, but it was still there.

• Tried again on Oct 8th 2018. I think that it's getting better, but there still seems to be a large periodic error that I need to figure out. Maybe I should get PEC working on the mount. Strange that I've only seen this using the AR127, not the EdgeHD 8. 
• Looking closer, this seems very weird. The nudges are in the wrong direction?

• Next attempt is tonight Oct 12th 2018. Here's the plan:
• Check the backlash settings in both PHD2, and the mount
• Check
• Check the sidereal settings for both PHD2, and the mount. Both should be .99 (or .5)
• Fine in "Detailed Calibration Parameters"
• Check
• Try increasing the minimum move for RA, and DEC separately. More for DEC.
• Check
• polar align with a star near the celestial equator, and the meridian with out getting to close to the meridian.
• Check -- This worked great.  
• Pay close attention to the wires, just in case they are tugging on the scope every 10 min. that might be the big jump in guiding that's happening. 
• Check
• Reset the guiding settings to default if things are not working
• Check Everything seemed to work roughly the same with reset settings. 
• Try to use a different algorithm
• Resist switch for declination
• Check the default for RA
• Check Looks like it's not the algorithm, but something else, maybe not "East Ballanced" very well...

So Oct12 ended up like this:

Still not good. One good thing that I saw was that I was able to just reset the PHD2 guiding algorithm parameters, and it looked about the same. I think that maybe I lost the "East Balance". Next time I'll try to do the exact same, but make sure it's nicely east balanced. 

The polar align seemed to go great this time. I also have come to the conclusion that I can never use the RTC with the AVX. Even with a new battery, the mount seemed to just go haywire when using RTC. I had to factory reset it and start all over. 

Oct16:
It was more like a "West" balance, so I adjusted it, and that seemed to work much better
One thing that I noticed, is that the AVX seemed to have forgotten my location. It want's to use Sirius as an alignment star and it's below the horizon! Setting the location seemed to clear things up. Guiding improved, but I think that I still need to make the altitude balance camera heavy, as it seemed to be bouncing back and forth.