Dual Axis Drive System -- Newbie HELP!!!!!!!!!

I just purchased the Orion Skyview Pro 120 telescope and equitorial mount with the TrueTrack Dual Axis DC Motor Drive system (#7832).

I'm having a problem with this dual axis drive system and hope all of you more experienced folks can help me in explaining either what I'm doing wrong, or if the product is
defective.

I set up the motor assembly drives per the instructions sent to me with the telescope. Tonight I went out to use the drive for the first time since receiving the drive and telescope. Per the instructions, I balanced the
telescope, then aligned it with Polaris.

I then wanted to view another star through the telescope and track it using the dual axis drive system. Once the star was centered in the eyepiece, the drive would not automatically track the star and keep it aligned in the
center of the eyepiece. Within a few seconds, the star was completely out of the vision of the eyepiece.

I tried to manually center the star using the handheld push-button controller that came with the drive. When using the buttons, the RA buttons moved the star at a good pace across my view through the eyepiece, however, when pushing the DEC buttons to center the star, the star barely moved at all. The batteries in the controller battery pack are brand new batteries just purchased.

According to my understanding of how this drive system works, once balanced and polarly aligned, the drive system should automatically keep an object centered in the eyepiece without any manual corrections on my part using the
hand held controller.

Can you help me in advising me what I'm doing wrong, or if the part seems defective to you?

Thank you all in advance for your suggestions and help. This is a terrific forum for newcomers to the astronomy world and I appreciate all advice and help greatly.

Bruce,
Are you tightening the axis levers (on the mount) and the clutches on the drive after manually pointing the scope?
Bob

Not to be a wise a**, but did you have it switched to N for northern hemisphere tracking? I have switched the controller on a GEM to S on more than one occasion myself and believe me, it won't track the northern sky worth a darn!

Doug
Midway, FL

I had that True Track system mounted on a Super Polaris and it worked pretty well, but it' not a very high torque system. If the gears are meshed tight they can bind and keep the mount from moving at all. Obviously the clutches must be tight. The scope and mount should be balanced in both RA and Dec (which you have already reported doing, and it shouldn't require paranoia either). Finally, as Ed ting put it, the RA gearing must be set up looser for a motor drive than we like it for manually operated slow motion.

Hope one of these works!

The only thing left that I can think of is to make sure that the cables aren't reversed... I may be tracking in DEC instead of RA...
Chris Woodruff