May I request a change to EKOS mount to allow a negative HA to be specified. This would cause the telescope to flip before it reaches Meridian which would be useful at times to avoid a flip due just after the imaging sequence starts close to the Meridian on the East side. (or West side if North of Celestial Pole).

I think everyone wants this feature, unfortunately, I do not think it is possible to implement.

I believe the merdian flip is a go-to function of the mount, not EKOS. EKOS just issues a slew command and the mount decides if it is time to perform a meridian flip. The reason the setting exists in EKOS is some mounts will not perform a merdian flip until the object is a few degrees past meridian.

Correct, this is not possible AFAIK.

Thanks Aaron for explanation. The EQ8 mount has 3 Flipping Modes, Auto, Force and No flipping. Force and No Flipping only work for the next GOTO after that I guess reverts back to Auto.

Just for interest only, I will try setting to Force flipping using handset then GOTO an hour before Meridian to see what it does. The manual doesn't mention when force flipping can be applied but guessing it may be only after telescope has passed the Meridian. If it did work and telescope passes Meridian later and does a slew its already flipped so mount would have to recognise this.

Most mounts won't support this as others have said.

But you can force the mount to one side of the pier in indi so you can start a sequence "on the wrong side" of the pier and let it run across the Meridian without flipping. I've done it with my mount EQ6-R but maybe some mounts won't support this. Obviously you have to be careful about crashing your optical train into the scope and you are consciously deciding to remove the "protection" of the Meridian Flip so be careful to reset the parameters before moving to another target.