On the last clear night, I tried Polar Align Assist twice, but had two different and strange outcomes.

On the first try, PAA completed, then displayed the overlay with the grid, but the magenta colored line was partially outside the picture.

On the second try, PAA rotated the telescope east too far until the tube was stopped by the mount and the hand controller detected current draw on RA and put out an error message.

My mount is a CG5 with the GotoNova Kit. It has encoders on each axis.

So, the questions are:

1. PAA requires tracking to be engaged. Is there a way to do this from KStars/Ekos/INDI? I did not find a way to do so, and have to press the track button on the hand controller.

2. Is it required that before doing PAA, one needs to do a regular align (say to the East) using Plate solving?

3. If a previous regular align is needed, how do we take the scope back to the home position (pointing near Polaris)? Or does one try to polar align when pointing east, and let PAA error out and slew to the North Celestial Pole?

4. If I tell the scope to park using the right click context menu (or the Mount Control), and it does point to NCP, is that sufficient, or does it do something to the mount to disrupt normal operation after? At one point I did park, but the scope would not move afterwards, and I had to power cycle it.

5. Any other hints and tips? Please share them below ...

1. Is there a command that engages tracking for Gotonova?
2. No
4. Not sufficient since it is again not tracking, despite being at the "correct" position.

1. If there was one, where in Ekos is the user interface for engaging tracking?

All I can find is :RG#, page 43 in 8401 hand controller manual , but it says guiding too, so don't know what it does.

4. I was pointing east, then told the scope to park, then pressed the track button on the hand controller, then the two above scenarios happened (magenta line half outside the picture, and scope in weird position stopped by the mount).

Not sure what else to try.

Test :RG and find if it tracks sidereally or not. How to stop tracking?