Problem(s) Encountered:

At the end of the night the north-south buttons on the virtual paddle stopped working.  EW buttons were fine, and the gross movement in dec was good also (slew worked).  Tried restarting the GUI - didn''t help - but didn''t have time to pursue it further with dawn coming on.

Solutions:

This likely has to do with how the declination preload is tensioned.  Using larger motions (setting the hand paddle to 10), I see that the telescope does indeed respond to demanded movement in declination.  I think the issue being seen here stems from throttling back the preload and thusly adding a little extra gear lash.  After installing modspec, I noticed severe ‘moaning’ from the telescope when moving in declination.  Indeed the motor controller even tripped a couple times.  I lessened the preload until the moaning got a bit better.  It still moans, but I think it’s in a tolerable threshold now.  That said, I did increase the preload slightly this afternoon.  It moans a bit more but not too badly.  Moving the telescope around, I verified that the controller wouldn’t trip.  This will reduce the gear lash and hopefully make the hand paddle control slightly more responsive.