Are You Willing To Admit To...?

[Mr Q]

Breaking (accidentally of course) some of your observing equipment? I'm now going to set myself up for a curse by admitting that I have not as yet done this. I have come close (tripping on mount legs, dropping oculars on the grass, etc.) but so far the Gods of observing have been good to me. How about you? If you are willing to admit to a serious breakage , at least you have my sympathies . Mr Q

[Veeger]

Nothing too serious so far. When I was a kid, I had a cheap reflector (it was my workhorse scope for years) which I dropped and the diagonal mount snapped off. It was plastic and integral with the focuser (which was really just a slide focus). Back then every kid had airplane glue tucked away in a model box somewhere. A few dabs and a few hours later I was back in business.

I also had a homemade mount with a red light ( a red christmas light bulb) which I built into the base for looking at charts. I tripped over the cord and yanked all the wiring out of the base, but it was no big disaster because I rarely looked at charts outside anyway.

-Veeger

[Mr Q]

Veeger - I'm laughing because it sounds like something that usually happens to me, and like you, no serious damage done (except to my ego). I hope your good luck continues! Mr Q

[redshifter]

I had a freind of a freind drop my 10X50 binocs a few years back, rendering them utterly useless. Luckily they were crappy Tasco binocs, so no big loss.

[Starchild615]

I am so scared of my new equipment. I am always having these visions of something falling to the ground and hearing that dreaded CRACk noise.

So far so good here

[Hornblower]

I dropped my Celestron 8 hard enough to dislodge the finder from its mount. Fortunately the main scope was not damaged and it needed only some tweaks of the three secondary setscrews to restore the collimation.

[RickJ]

Celestron SCT's are built strong. At Hyde Memorial Observatory, where I was a supervisor for 27 years we have a C-14. The roof is 30 feet wide by 20 feet deep and needs a 2 horsepower motor to move it. Belt drive offers the only "clutch". There are two belts so they don't have much give. One night someone (no, I wasn't on duty that night) rolled the roof with the C-14 (1976 model) pointed at the zenith. The 6" iron I beam across that 30 foot span hit the scope. It is mounted to the concrete pier by 3, 1/2" bolts. The impact ripped one bolt clean out of the concrete and bent the others over. They held so it didn't fall. Some concrete work to replace the bolts and all was fine. It didn't even knock the C-14 out of collimation or nick the paint. You can't even see where the impact was on the tube!

Of course the fellow who rolled the roof that night was the one always asking for a safety interlock so the roof wouldn't roll with the scope up. Never was done but I do have one in my observatory with a 14" LX200R.

One night I couldn't get the roof to open. It just wouldn't go. Ran out cussing a blue streak to find I'd left the scope pointing straight up when doing some work on it during the day. My roof is chain drive so no slipping belts to save me but the interlock did. I was praising it on the way back inside. A couple more times it's saved me as well. I need a big sign to flash in the control room: "Dummy, you left the scope up!" As each time I'm convinced something besides my brain malfunctioned.

Only damage to my stuff was when I was a kid. I had a 2.4" on a super alt azimuth mount. I let the tripod fall over. No scope on the mount at the time. It fell against the butter smooth, very steady (compared to today's crap it is the rock of Gibraltar) altitude slow motion. It hit the bracket that held the worm gear breaking it (bracket) in half. It was made of cast iron. Welding shop put it all back together. Worm was bent and you can never straighten one perfectly. So it has a few places where it is a bit tight but still rock solid. I still use that scope and mount today for watching what's going on in a near by bald eagle nest each summer.

Oh yes, I had a newtonian with a super mirror and a very expensive quartz secondary that was supposedly of high accuracy. The scope never gave good images. One day working on the focuser I dropped a screwdriver on that super expensive secondary. Took a big chunk out of it. Replaced it with an el cheapo flat since the scope never worked well. Suddenly I had perfect images. I had the old flat tested, it was 2 wave!! So much for expensive secondaries. So that damage did me a great favor. Now that's my main scope and it has super optics. That was my "lucky break" you might say.

My Cave 10" f/8 Newtonian has a 42mm 10x Unitron finder (dates to the late 50's). I was viewing the sun and forgot to cap the finder. That finder had super fine cross hairs you couldn't see at night without shining a flashlight into it. Optics were super, it worked great at 100x with a regular eyepiece and barlow. But that fine cross hair was a pain. Anyway, next time I went to use it the cross hairs no longer crossed. They came in and stopped a solar radius from the center! Over the next couple weeks they slowly sagged to the side. I replaced them with 36 gauge nichrome wire. Now I could look at the sun without capping the finder (good way to burn an ear though) and not melt the cross hairs. Also they were wide enough to easily see at night. Another case of a "lucky break".

Rick

[Madam Captain]

My celestron scope has these round plastic things on each side that connect it to the dob mount. The plastic parts were held in with screws but they came loose and fell out. My scope sat on the floor of my lounge room for about 6 months before I finally fixed it. As the tube is so long, I couldn't reach inside it to put the nuts back on the end of the screws, so I threaded some wire through the holes. Then I threaded the wire through the holes of the round plastic parts and shoved the screws back through. They stayed in place and I was able to connect it up to the mount again.

When I first got my scope, I was trying to work out how to use my barlow lense. I put the lense in place but it fell through the eyepiece holder (I didn't realise that I needed to fit another eyepiece onto it first) and it fell down the tube and hit the mirror. I thought it would be damaged but it was fine!!

[Starchild615]

When your lens hit the mirror you must have jumped out of your skin, I know I would have. But I am glad that no damage was done, that would have been a horror story if it played out the other way for you. Glad your scope is ok

[Wakenaam]

I'm grinding my second mirror now...a month ago the first mirror (10") took a gravity dive off the tool at 9micron whilst my back was turned putting the spray bottle down ....that sort of thing drives a man to drink ..

[RickJ]

I'm grinding my second mirror now...a month ago the first mirror (10") took a gravity dive off the tool at 9micron whilst my back was turned putting the spray bottle down ....that sort of thing drives a man to drink ..

That happened to one of our club members. He'd spent over a year getting the absolute perfect figure on his 6" f/8 mirror. He invited us over to see the test for ourselves. We were all standing 8 feet away when it rolled off the test stand and fell 5 feet to the concrete floor!

He never did try again and soon left the hobby. A very sad day.

Glad to see you got right back in the saddle again!

Rick

[Wakenaam]

Thanks...I took therapy in rebuilding the grinding table to prevent a re-occurrence and to start the Foucault tester...

(good judgement = bad experience + hindsight)

W

[KaiYeves]

'Got sand on my binocs once. Could have led to really bad scratching. But that was an accident.

[winensky]

No disasters just one close call about three months ago. About three in the morning after shooting a nebula in the LMC, I thought I would slew around to have a quick look at Mars. As I reached for my fourth coffee, I heard the motors suddenly change pitch as the camera USB cable pulled tight around the OT. I turned to see my laptop headed for the edge of the observing table. The coffee hit the ground as I yanked the cable from the computer and simultaneously switched off the scope. Needless to say I manually parked the scope and the only real damage was to pride and the coffee mug.

Kind regards
Matt

[fotobits]

Nope. Never done anything like that with astronomy equipment. I do, however, know exactly how high a Canon 135/3.5 lens bounces when dropped on a tile floor from four feet.