What a disaster...!

[JohnP]

oh dear! I screwed up big time... I took delivery of my new EQ6Pro mount today (getting pissed off with the LXD) - Just playing around with it in the dining room - I mounted on both my scopes i.e. MN56 & ZS66 so I could get approx balance position & I made mistake of not checking secureness of dovetail... Yep! you can guess turned the mount horizontal & both my MN56 & ZS66 fell from about 3 1/2 feet straight onto wooden floor... I've knackered the focusser on ZS66 (will need to talk to Mr King tomorrow to see if poss to fix) but touch wood optically both seem OK (i.e. no broken glass) - can't tell if they are OK till I do full star test etc...

I took mount out & had a quick play using my old 6-inch reflector & dovetail - I had limited success setting scope up etc. How do people choose alignment stars..? I eventually had limited success using 2-star alignment... most of goto's would work but some out of fov of 25mm eyepiece...

any help would be appreciated - John

[Ian]

ouch, John. Hopefully nothing else is damaged.

I sort of guess at alignment stars, Although I try to keep to one hemisphere (east or west). The meridian flip loads the mount on the opposite faces of bearing and gears and although the backlash can be conpensated for, if it's not there then that makes life a bit easier. I also tend to pick a final alignment star that is close to the final target.

If it's anything like the Skysensor you'll find out if anything else is loose (other than the dovetail, you're on your own on that one), it'll not give you a 3 star alignment (or worse depending on how loose it is).

[JohnP]

Thks Ian.... I'll let you know how I get on with it next time out... John

[JohnP]

Chris - I could tell you what I think of that comment but as this is a public forum I won't..... I wouldn't want my language to offend....

I figure that every astronomer has to drop a scope at least once in their life - hopefully that's mine over with....!

John.

[Fay]

John,

as you know, I had a scope fall off the mount, where I had not attached it correctly. I now try to setup in daylight sp I can make sure it is firm. I have always thought that the method of the dovetail attachment was strange, a bit sort of primitive, just held on with a couple of screws.

I was very worried last night with everything I own attached to the mount all pointing to the Zenith with the mount on concrete!

I kept checking the screws in case of metal contraction & a couple of times I was, this could be the wrong phrase, I was screwing the wrong way. Good job I had hold of the object. If you know what I mean. (digging myself into a hole here!)


Hope damage is not as bad as it could be.

Fay
   

 

[Tony G]

John,

Sorry to hear about the scopes, hope everythings OK with them, if not home insurance may cover the damage and you could get a new scope to go with the new mount. (you kept that quiet about the new mount)

http://www.amateur-astronomy.org/Filez/SkyScanStarCharts.zip

This is a link that Mike put on the forum back in March which may help with the star alignment

Tony G

[JohnP]

Cheers Fay/ Tony... I only decided on new mount about a week ago - I was fighting a loosing battle with the LXD - hopefully the Eq6 will open up new imaging opportunities & be a bit more repeatable....!

Tony - thks for the link  I actually found it on the EQ6 forum & downloaded from there - good job Mike....

Just need some clear skies now to test mount & see what state my scopes are in...

John

[Tony G]

John,

Now you have the new mount, I take it that Luke has now inherited the old mount, but hopefully he hasn't inherited any scopes.

Tony G

[JohnP]

Tony - Luke has certainly put his claim in on the old mount but not decided yet... It's quite small/ portable so I may keep it as a small mount to use for wide FOV DSLR imaging if I go away etc. With a quick polar alignment & unguided I could probably do quite long exposures...

I'll see - hopefully the new mount will work out well..

John

[JohnP]

OK - Update...

Tested MN56 last night & all seems OK - Phew...

I found with the ZS66 that there was a small black locking nut missing from underneath the focusser - Ian King kindly sent me a replacement FOC & after replacing all seems OK.. I can't believe that there seems to be no lasting damage after the fall both scopes had. I discussed at length with Ian about the missing nut & I am convinced that this had come off before the scopes fell - There is no way it could have come off during the fall without causing damage so A WORD OF WARNING TO ALL ZS66 OWNERS... next time you use your scope make sure the little black knurled nut underneath the focuser is secure/ tight (this is what holds the focuser in place).

Chers,  John