I was able to to achieve 3 minutes of perfect alignment the other night! Jupiter stayed perfectly centered in the circle of my special alignment eyepiece, with no visible drift until shortly after 3 minutes. The longest exposure time so far that my friend Dave and I have attempted is about 40 seconds, so 3 mins would have produced some fairly decent results. Unfortunately Dave was not here(camera boy), so I was unable to do so.
What made this latest attempt more successful I believe was that after performing the drift alignment to the south(azimuth adjustment to the mouth) and then to the east(altitude adjustment to the mount), I repeated the south drift alignment again. I have read that after performing the second step, it throws the first step off a little. That seems perfectly logical to me because you are changing the location of the polar axis on your mount by adjusting either the azimuth or altitude.
