MDM Trouble Report for 2013 May 28

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Dale Mudd (Ohio State University)
Instrument: CCDS

Problem(s) Encountered:
Initially I had the issue of N-S nodding that Eric warned me about.
  To try and solve, I bounced around my targets a bit, which 
seemed to help shake off the issue.  It began persisting after 
about an hour though, this time in E-W direction rather than 
N-S.  To try and alleviate the issue, I once again tried going 
to other targets (standard stars).  On the last, the telescope 
lost tracking (this target was at low declination, much less than 
the warned about 70).  I then took the telescope back to zenith, 
then to the original target to find that E-W nodding was still 
an issue.  I went around once more to see if it was affecting the 
other objects, and the telescope continually lost tracking.  
Eventually it could no longer be pointed to zenith using the 
TCS control panel.  I tried restarting TCS to no avail.  

One of the observers at the 2.4m (Emir) said he had a similar 
experience on a previous run at the 1.3m and came down to try 
and help.  We tried increasing the tx paddle gain to make it 
such that the handpaddle could move the telescope towards zenith.
  The TCS system only seemed to listen to about half of these 
commands and would then ignore the rest.  Eventually it stopped 
listening altogether, even after repeated restarts.  As such, 
the tx paddle gain may need to be reset to a more normal value 
when things are working smoothly again.  At this point it was 
about twilight, so we closed the dome and the mirror, but the 
telescope is not stowed to zenith.  The declination is roughly 
correct, but the RA is not, as the paddle commands selectively 
worked on Dec and not RA.

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Submitted on 2013 May 29 [5:01:53]