Solver problem solved!

even after installing 3.1.1 my astrometry didn't do a thing. Spent some time and recognized that the astrometry.cfg file was never written correctly because my MAC did not allow kstars to write into these directories (??)(weird). I changed the permissions for these directories for "everybody" to "read and write", and bingo!

I didn't check online plate solving yet, but offline seems amazing. I tried a few "load and slew" requests the first one took some 90 seconds, but now it "knocks them out of the park" within 5-8 seconds!

Hope my suggestion helps somebody out

And Thanks to all contributing to this thread helping me understand...

Michael