Finally

I bought this Losmandy G811G mount last year and between cold-induced ER visits, cloudy nights, too tired to stay up late, various pilot setup errors, I have been frustrated by my inability to get this marvelously sophisticated and beautiful piece of equipment doing what it is supposed to do.

Tonight I had a clear night, tolerable temperature, and a very clear plan of attack.  You need to pick several objects from the control panel.   Wait for it to slew to that approximate position then use the hand controller to move the mount until you are close enough to center in the eyepiece, then tell it you are now centered on the target.  Ideally you pick several targets in different parts of the sky.  I did not immediately recognize any stars in the eastern sky (which I should probably learn) but I used Procyon, the Moon and Betelguese.  Then I selected goto M42 and after a bit whirring of motors, M42 was visible in the eyepiece.   It was not centered well but as I said pick objects across the sky and center them with a higher powered eyepiece than I wad using and all is well. 

Three things that were biting me:

1. I need to rotate the tube assembly in the mounting rings a bit more clockwise.   Right now I am having to almost climb on top of the tube ala Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.   Also I recently swapped my traditional 9x60 finder for a Telrad which is much more intuitive but a bit clumsy to use in H-bomb position.

2. Once the mount starts to goto you want everything out of the way, including the rolling ladder.  This just requires some thinking ahead.

3. Remember to lock down the casters once rolled out.   I ran into the mount with the step ladder and suddenly I was well off north.  Too tired to start over but at least I have a known procedure that works.