Blast! Milburn Wedge Issue

I was trying to figure out my motor drive issue today on the LX200. I also wanted to make a slight adjustment on the Milburn Wedge; it needed to be more centered to make initial polar alignment easier (the azimuth adjustment was too far to the eastern direction and always made setup a bit of a headache!). Anyway, after a couple of light rotations of the azimuth control, the center bolt that connects the front of the wedge to the a little strut that is attached to the main tripod (azimuth thrust control) cracked off! Not sure how that happened, although I could have been overzealous in my adjustments the last few nights and maybe stressed the aluminium too much.

















So, I emailed Ken Milburn himself, and he very quickly responded by telling me that he had a few spare parts around that would help, and it would only cost US$16.00 to buy and ship! Talk about impressive support and service!! I will hopefully have this part next week and the wedge will be repaired shortly thereafter. Major kudos to Milburn!

That will then allow me to redirect my attention on my drive issue. It is the Right Ascension drive, and is running away at about 1 degree every 7 minutes or so. I swapped my battery out for the main AC supply just to be sure my battery pack wasn't the cause, but it wasn't. Grrr. I am REALLY hoping that this is the scope's annual weirdness episode that it usually experiences. I will leave it for a few weeks and then see if the problem persists. Fingers crossed...