CGEM with a mind of its own!

Purchased my new CGEM just over a month ago and all worked great until this morning. I woke up the scope around 03:00 local time and slewed to Jupiter. Before I could do anything else, the scope took off in Declination and slewed for another 15 degrees or so about every 10 seconds. It kept doing this, completing a full circle until I shut it off. It does this regardless of what I slew to or even if I try to do an alignment. So far I have checked my power cord and made sure it was secure in the socket, reset to the factory settings and tried another handset. The one thing that makes a difference is to hit one of the direction keys after it slews to an object. Hitting it just once makes everything work normally. Any one heard of this before?
robin

Yes! In fact we just dealt with this issue with another club member's scope. He had dropped the hand box so we got a replacement but that was not the issue. Finally we took it down to Celestron and let them work on it. Hector,who runs their tech support, tested the unit himself, flashing the hand controller and the mount firmware.

He could see that the mount firmware would become corrupted the moment it was turned back on. They actually ended up replacing the entire mount head and now it works fine. I would definitely get in touch with Celestron in order to ship the mount head back (or go through you retailer if it's a Celestron dealer). I know you are out in TX but visiting the Celestron facility is an option too. they've been upgrading their facility in Torrance and have doubled their space and added an observatory (though the outskirts of LA is not the ideal location for one...)

Here's their info if you don't have it at hand:

Celestron, LLC.
2835 Columbia St
Torrance, CA 90503

telephone: 310-328-9560
Tech Support: 310-803-5955
fax: 310-212-5835
Web email form: http://www.celestron.com/c3/support3/index.php?departmentid=1&_m=tickets&_a=submit&step=1

-Don B