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Vixen Equatorial Mount, MD-6SP

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Seapy:
Another amazing thing happened today, another good friend asked me if I could use a 15º per hour motor drive...  My brain wasn't switched on enough for the penny to drop, after a bit of calculating I realised it was an equatorial mount, he has no use for it and though I might have.

The price?  50 paving blocks for his driveway, of which I have almost 3,800, glad to be rid of a few!

There has to be a but...  It's old, it appears complete, amazingly with a genuine Benbo ball head.  Unfortunately the multi core lead which uses a dinse? 8 pin plug and socket has been broken from the plug, so I will need to identify the connections, pinouts, in order to re-connect it.

It has a Polar scope, which is central on the axis of the rotation.  It's hard to view through it because there is a lever in the way but it appears to be etched with the four Ursa Major stars, and some other markings, a central cross, 40' 60' with 5 tic marks and a circle on the line. which I assume you target on Polaris.  It doesn't have a right angle adaptor like the one Øivind's mount in another thread. 

It weighs about 3 Kg, without the electrics. There is a control box with X1 - X2 switch and some buttons, hard to read the lettering.

I have quickly searched for info but can't find anything specific, I suspect it's a very old model, the motor driver is Quartz controlled.

Any comments or suggestions will be most welcome, I don't want to mess it up, or damage it.

Øivind Tøien:

Congratulations with your lucky tracker "purchase", Robert. You could try to post a question on https://www.cloudynights.com. It is a lot more oriented towards classical mounts. It would likely be helpful to illustrate the questions with some images of the mount, (as we would like to see here   ;) ) A quick search came up with these two on top, I do not know if they are relevant:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/419824-diy-controller-for-super-polaris-md-5-motors/
https://www.f1telescopes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Vixen_Super_Polaris_Manual.pdf

The right angle finder on my SkyTracker polar scope is a Nikon DR-3 (about $25 on ebay, a little more for DR-4 ) which I made an adapter for. A modified Nikon DK-22 provided the threads for the adapter that the DR-3 screws into.

Seapy:
Many thanks for that Øivind, I will check out the links and the right angle finder would be very useful.

I am a bit puzzled about the aiming scope, looking through it in the house I see the etched markings but taking it outside tonight, reasonably dark, I see the stars but not the (black) etched markings.  Is there any way to illuminate the scope or is it OK when you get the mount on a tripod?

Øivind Tøien:
The Skytracker polar scope has an opening for a red LED that resides in the tracker to illuminate the reticle. My brother has a little Vixen Polarie, and one of the issues he has is illuminating the reticle of the polar scope. He uses a hand held red LED touch to shine into the polar scope front at an angle. If you search a little, you will find companies that sell an illuminator that attaches to the front of the polar scope, or one could easily put something simple together that will stay put at the front, just a red LED, a resistor, a battery and a switch is all that is needed. The LED does not need to be very powerful.

Seapy:
Ah, OK that makes sense.  I think I have identified the pinout colours for the plug, I will check them again but I'm pretty sure now.

Thanks again for your help.   ;D

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