A few years back I was given a right ascention tracking motor for Christmas. At the time, it was a good fit for my old EQ-1 mount, but I never ended up using it because it required me to give up use of the RA slow motion knob. I was still fairly new to the hobby and relied on the slow motion controls for paning around to find my target. This was probably harder on my old mount because of the modifications I made to the ST-80. The addition of the crayford focuser tipped the weight balance of the scope considerably towards the back. This made both the use of the RA motor, and the task of manual slewing more difficult.
Now, while I still rely on the RA slow motion control pretty heavily, I feel like I'm at a place where I can remove them and force myself to learn how to get by without it. This means that all RA centering (or panning) on a target will have to take place with a slewing motion (unlock the RA and manually rotate the scope by hand). This should be easier now with my AT102ED on the CG-4 mount since I can properly balance both RA and DEC during setup.
The clouds finally lifted tonight, but the atmospheric turbulence was horrible. I decided to install the RA motor on my CG-4 mount and spend some time practicing and testing it out. My target was M 31; and while the observational quality of it was bad due to the turbulence, I was able to slew to it, center it, and keep it in view pretty easily using the RA motor. The speed of the motor is tuned for a mount with a different RA gear, so I had to make a few adjustments to decrease or increase the speed of the motor if M 31 began drifting to far ahead or behind of the FoV. These speed adjustments were not needed very often (5+ minutes at max). Now that I'm taking more time for my sketches, not having to constantly adjust RA during observation could be a boon. Only time will tell.