USER OBSERVATIONS Last updated: 19 June 2009

Subject:	ETX-LS WOES AND WOWS
Sent:	Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:17:36
From:	Michael Pierce (michael@ideaco.net)
I also just got the ETX-LS and was very excited...The first night I
could not get it to align ! after 3 hours of watching the thing scan
around the night sky searching for stars and watching it pass them buy
in the eyepiece...I was like there it was you stupid machine!!!

I finally went to bed very disappointed and tossed and turned all night
with buyers remorse and trying to figure out why it was not working.

The next night I could not wait to get home and do it all again....but
it stayed cloudy for the next three days...

after having three days to search around on line and finding nothing it
dawned on me that the time must be off ( despite the gps) and turns out
the "daylight savings time" was off as well. it asked me " is it
daylight time?" to which i replied "no" since it was dark outside....my
mistake ...it was refiring to daylight savings time.

I set all that up manually and viloa...it searched for stars got aligned
and i was looking at the rings of saturn, uranus or neptune? not sure
exactly...smudgy nebulas and  really cool star clusters...i was like WOW
THIS IS AWESOME...it tracks really good too!

I stayed up that night till past 3 am in my back yard ( which by the way
is saturated with light pollution)...cant wait to get out to some dark
skys.

so i think everything is great.... and then last night i took it out to
the back yard and the darn thing would not align...turns out the time
was off some how again?

it thought  I was in california and the time was off ...i set it back to
Houston time and i was back in business.

so here some advise for some others

1. make sure the daylight savings time is set to the proper "yes" or
"no" it just says "daylight time"? not "daylight savings time"

2. make sure time and location is correct...you may have to set it
manually each time like i do. which sucks.

once that is done the scope works awesome ! but yes it is tricky and has
some bugs and it moves around really slow and takes the "long way
around" some times...which can be frustrating....so grab a chair and
something to drink and be prepared for some weird moments of what the
heck is this thing doing....but i still think Galileo would be pretty
excited about the ETX-LS but he would still want his trusty old
fashioned telescope around.

Michael Pierce 

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