OK, I am having some odd issues, and I think some of it is related to flipping the mount. Reviewing my logs, I am a bit confused.

I started the evening with a target which I believe was just west of the meridian. ACP shows WEST in the display, but the OTA is on the west side of the mount, tilted below 180 of level.
- I think WEST means the OTA is looking to the west of meridian? How can I tell if the OTA is on the West or East side? I would have thought that the initial slew to the target would put the OTA on the East side, looking WEST. However, the system rarely seems to do that. It prefers to tilt the OTA pretty far past meridian.

As the evening went on, the mount never flipped. I "think" it eventually hit the safety limit on the mount; one image shows the stars as "trails" about 50 arcminutes long in the RA direction, as though it stopped tracking. The flip check lines are

02:27:10 [flip check: Tn=660s HAc=2517s GW=T HAz=3178s DWz=F WF=no]
02:30:04 [flip check: Tn=2160s HAc=2692s GW=T HAz=4852s DWz=F WF=no]
02:30:44 [flip check: Tn=2100s HAc=2725s GW=T HAz=4832s DWz=F WF=no]
03:02:47 [flip check: Tn=2100s HAc=4655s GW=T HAz=6760s DWz=F WF=no]
03:34:05 [flip check: Tn=2100s HAc=6536s GW=T HAz=8643s DWz=T WF=no]
04:05:42 [flip check: Tn=0s HAc=7803s GW=T HAz=8444s DWz=T WF=no]
04:07:04 [flip check: Tn=2100s HAc=7877s GW=T HAz=10626s DWz=T WF=no]
04:40:15 [flip check: Tn=2100s HAc=9873s GW=T HAz=12622s DWz=T WF=no]
05:12:55 [flip check: Tn=2100s HAc=11839s GW=T HAz=14586s DWz=T WF=no]


Not sure what these mean. GW=T means the mount is on the west? This matches what I experienced - the OTA stayed on the Wets side all night. It sounds like Tn is the time until the mount needs to flip? If so, wouldn't it steadily decrease until the mount flips? Not sure what else these lines tell me. Do these lines make sense?

My flipConfig.txt is the default one, 300 PreFlip, 120 post flip.


Also, the log has messages "**SYNC ACROSS FLIP POINT FOR GERMAN MOUNT. SYNC SKIPPED" when it does the pointing correction. Don't really know what this is telling me - is it a bad thing?


Perhaps related - the Autoguiding was not what I expected. I did a Calibration in Maxim, checked guiding worked, OK (looking East, OTA on west side). Then when ACP ran, the target was just west of meridian, OTA still on the West side, and the guiding tracked the guide star off the chart. I then checked "Pier Flip" in Maxim and re-ran the ACP plan, whereupon the guiding worked correctly. This also didn't make sense to me.


Lastly, I think an easy question: when autoguiding fails (due to dim star, I think I have a cloud) ACP decides to stop autoguiding and expose without guiding. This isn't going to work - I am doing 30 minute exposures, they aren't going to work without guiding. I thought I saw a setting somewhere about this, but I can't find it now. Seems like I want to either a) wait for awhile and try autoguiding again (maybe the cloud has passed) or b) wait awhile then move on to the next exposure. Anyone know where this setting is? Can I detect guide failure in the middle of an exposure and recover by restarting the exposure once guiding is working again?

I am attaching the entire log in case anyone wants to look it over for other things I should be seeing

Thanks,
brew