Fungus,
Thanks for the helpful reply.
Yeah, if I "nudge" the vertical position, the trace will move sooner than if I try to make sudden major position changes. As you wrote, AUTO works to help keep traces managed.
As you point out, the horizontal position can be used to start the sweep on the left-most vertical graticule but if you change the sweep parameters all bets are off.
Who at Rigol thought making channel 4's trace color dark blue was a good idea--damn hard to see in a sun lit room. A software hack to choose trace and background colors would be useful.
Lee