Night after night I've struggled to get my LX200R working to my satisfaction. As I've posted before, I kept losing alignment with handset lockups, and apparant issues with ASCOM connections as well. Last night, hopeing to catch some good viewing under fairly decent skies, I tried to go back to the minimalist features, staying in the dome with no computer use, and just using the handset to view.
Not long into my viewing session, I pressed "Enter" to go to another Messier object, and the handset locked up with an error about PL2 or something. (I know I should have written it down). Of course since it had locked up, the only recourse was to turn off the scope, which meant I now had to realign all over again. I swung around to Polaris, put it in polar align mode, and aligned again. It seemed to be working fairly well, so I swung over to Leo and started going through all the deep sky objects in it. I was surprised that they all showed up relatively centered in my 26mm eyepiece, and was rather pleased. It was getting late, so I thought I'd park the scope and call it a night. After selecting "Park Scope", it slewed back only half way to where it should be and stopped, with the "Turn off the scope" message.
Realizing this wasn't normal, I turned it off and then back on to check the alignment. Sure enough, it was lost yet again. Second time in one night. Great performance from a scope sitting on a wedge and a pier in a dome. Good thing I didn't bother dragging it outside.
Bottom line is that I think I really have a very expensive lemon. My scope already made the trip back to California, I mean Mexico, to get repaired last summer when the handset locked up and the scope was dead as a rock. I can't believe it isn't more reliable. Anyone else experiencing this kind of poor performance? Any suggestions besides throwing it out the shutter and getting a Celestron? I'm really starting to believe that "Meade" is a five-letter word for a blue piece of garbage...
