Last night it was clearing up nicely, after a very hot humid day.  I opened up the dome about 1 hour before dark to let things start to cool, then used that time to continue tuning the mount gears.  I took the cover off both worm blocks, inspected belt tightness and pivot screw tightness.

The Declination pivot screw seemed a bit loose, so I tightened it slightly. (This is another screw that has a “right amount” of tightness and I can’t find any documentation that gives the appropriate amount for the MX+, so I just snugged it up a bit by feel.)   I also loosened the RA spring tension plungers another 1/2 turn, so they are now at 3.5 turns out-from-bottom, which is the loose end of the specified range.

To see what effect these changes made, I started to set up for another Periodic Error data gathering run.  I was having trouble finding the guide star, and was wondering why until it occurred to me to look up.  Sigh. The sky had completely clouded over.  In fact, shortly after I closed up the dome, it started to rain.  So no new sky data to test the results of these latest adjustments.