SVP Intelliscope "First-Light"

Seeing that skies were clear, I brought my scope out just to see how well the COL works. I was pretty worried cos after making the DEC=0 mark, I actually took out the dovetail to add a washer to partially fix an RA axis problem.

After setting everything up, I aligned to DEC=0 ...Out came the message - "Thank you" .... Hmm, the Intelliscope's pretty polite - Just like Orion's Customer Service ...
Align Star 1 - Sirius, "Thank you" ...Align Star 2. Betelgeuse, "Thank you". DONE! (I was blocked from other bright stars so these western stars were all I could use at that time)
WARP FACTOR +38.1!!!!??? After trying to find my first object, it said "Encoder Error"

Aaahh .... the DEC encoder came lose ... so I did a quick Encoder test and pushed the encoder in .. DONE!
Did the whole alignment process, Warp factor +0.1 .... GREAT! =)

Oh no, I could see clouds coming in from all four sides, so I quickly tried to find a few items just to check the accuracy ...

M42, M41, M47 .... all came into the field of view ... even in my 25mm reticle EP.

Hmm .. there's a star just overhead ... wonder what that is(didn't bring any star charts), let's try the ID function .... "Searching .... " Prochyon" .... Cool!! Used it as the 3rd alignment star ... Warp Factor = -0.1 ... yay!

Saw Saturn just to the South Eastern sky, so I thought I'd try it. Enter Date, done. Saturn was not in the FOV of my EP but around the centre FOV in my 8x50 Finder (Keep in mind the 2 stars I used to align initially were both in the western sky and were very close together) .. so I centred it and used it as my 4th Alignment object. Warp Factor = -0.3 ... OK ...

Tried a few other stars, and they all came near the centre of my reticle EP. The clouds rolled in and I had to stop my session ....

I'm really happy with the Intelliscope! It's $200 well spent. Can't wait to try it out on another clear night with a wider sky area for me to move the scope. =)

Now with the COL working, I've gotta spend some time on my collimation, dew shield and a proper way to pack my scope and accesories ... =)