Firstly, a friend Andrew J. from the astro group I am in  'MelbMeadeScopes · Australian Advanced Telescope Users', came around and we replaced all of the gears and generally removed the excess slackness from the drive train. Thanks so much Andrew.

Then it was a matter of waiting for the weather to clear. TWO WEEKS later I finally get a decent night; clear and still. As a matter of fact it was the clearest night I have seen. It was the first time I have actually seen the milky way from my suburban backyard in many years.

Anyway, first attempt at a two minute exposure with autoguding and GAH!!! Elongated Stars again  Grrr!  Tried a few more times and no go. So I hooked up Pem Pro and let it run through a full cycle recording the PE for the scope with the PEC off. Let it calculate the PEC curve and downloaded the curve to the scope. Then did another PE analysis with the PEC ON this time and a much smaller curve resulted. Added the two curves and downloaded the corrected pec. Did this one more time. The three images below represent the Periodic Error as the night progress. I have not taken another since that all three adjustments have been made, but looking at the graph output from the autoguider software I can really see the difference. It has gone from Razor Back Mountain to a mild heart rate monitor :-)  And I did some 5 minute exposures and WooooHoooo Stars are round again.  Then around midnight I realised I had not eaten anything since lunchtime and was freezing to death so I packed up for the night. Content that I finally may be able to do some imaging.

There is a slight bit of drift.. but its quite small considering the time frame for each graph is 30 mins approx.