Greetings. Out of ideas of what to do about my AM5, I am coming here in hopes of a solution, or at least information.
Here is what happened: On the night/morning of December 20th-21st, I was doing some astrophotography and all was well up until the end of the autorun. It was set to return to the home position and shut down the ASIAir. After this was supposed to have happened, I went outside to retrieve my equipment. I saw that my scope was pointing down in the opposite position of home which is towards Polaris (which is about at a 35 degree angle for me). Everything was powered down as it was supposed to. I reapplied power to the ASIAir and turned the AM5 back on to try to see what had happened and get it in the correct configuration. I quickly found out that the declination axis would not move. It would make a sound that was a cross between a clicking and grinding noise. In addition to that, the same button in the ASIAir software one might use to manually control the declination axis would sometimes attempt to rotate it the same direction as the opposite button. That makes zero sense to me. Eventually, I discovered that when the tracking rate of the mount is set to MAX, the axis will eventually turn after the button is held down for about 4 seconds. It is very resistant to doing this, though. I used this to get my mount pointing in roughly the home position. I have done a lot of research and I cannot find a single instance of this happening to anyone else. Agena Astro's return policy ends after 30 days so they pointed me to ZWO support. Someone from ZWO support was talking with me but has now not responded in a week. Before becoming unresponsive, they told me to check the belt tension and provided instructions on how to do so. After carefully opening up the mount, I could see that the belt tension looked and felt fine. However, I could see while attempting to rotate it through manual controls within the ASIAir app that it was the gear, or perhaps more specifically the motor, that would try to rotate but would not. Again, it eventually will as described above. I have videos of this as well that I shared with the support member. My guess is that the problem is a faulty declination motor but I cannot be sure of this and I do not know why it would only be a problem with my AM5 specifically and nobody else.
History of my AM5: I purchased it from Agena Astro on June 21, 2023. I have always kept very good care of it and stored it in the case it comes with when not in use. I also wipe the dew off of it when bringing it back in from outside.
Since the mount was purchased in June, it should still be under warranty. What I would like to happen is to send my AM5 back to ZWO or their repair center and just receive a new one. I don't think whatever is wrong with it is something I can fix myself, but if it is, I am fine doing that as well. Either way, I would not be able to buy another one if ZWO rejects their own warranty.
I could not get any videos to upload here even though the smallest one is only 8.5MB, but I do have them and will see about another way to show them here.
Thank you for reading.
