LX200

I purchased my Meade LX200 in March 1993 along with a SuperWedge. Later that year I upgraded the database to the 8000 CNGC Library. To date, I have had no problems with this instrument. My primary use has been astro-photography.

My main complaint is with the slope in the SuperWedge adjustments. The latitude adjustment knob turns 1 1/2 times when reversing directions before any movement is detected. The azimuth knob is better with only a 1/2 rotation of play when changing directions. I have modified my SuperWedge by adding bronze bushings and machining a new azimuth thrust bar pin. This has proven to remove almost all the slop in the SuperWedge. Please click on the link to the left to see what I did.

In late 2007 my LX200 suffered from a failure of the declination drive. I dissected the PCB that controls the declination encoder pulses and got it running again. In the process I made a new schematic of the encoder board that corrects an error on the previous schematic that has been on the web for some time. While at it, I took apart the hand controller and documented it with a new schematic and PCB layout as well. A new LX200 hand controller is on the drawing board and in the planning stages.

While working on a new LX200 Advanced Hand Controller, I wrote a VB6 program that issues nearly all the commands I could find via a PCs RS-232 port to the serial port of the LX200. The program displays what is expected to be returned and what is returned and stores this data in a text file. If you have the ability, I would love to have you run the program and email me the text file along with the particulars (serial number, model) of your LX200 Classic. Please note that this program will apparently only work when the Meade hand controller is plugged in. While it does over write many of the user set items (Lat, Long, Time, Site) it also writes back the original values. The last function is testing the PEC - there is an option to quit the program, saving the data collected and not destroying your PEC training. I look forward to hearing from LX200 Classic users

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