One of those weeks...

[RobertM]

Well this hasn't been a good week so far !

Firstly the cooler on the SX camera gave up and it started giving strange results (could be the PSU I guess).  It also looks like the camera sensor is not orthogonal so has to go back for adjustment.

Secondly the main 12V power lead developed an intermittent fault, that ended up being a break in the multistrand cable within the plastic sheathing and took me ages to locate.

The dew controller is now giving me grief and seems to be either full on or off.

Plus various other assorted annoyances

I then set up for a long session last night with the FLI and the battery gave up after about 2 hours subs.

Sometimes I just feel like giving up 

Robert

[Mike]

The cooler on my old SX camera went on the blink too. I sent it back to Starlight and they repaired it and sent it back free of charge despite the camera being many years old.

[MarkS]

I also hit problems last night.

I was up until 4:30am to image Jupiter and there were some periods of quite good seeing but I lost a whole chunk of data (90 minutes of AVI during the best seeing) when the leisure battery voltage dropped causing the external hard drive to shut down which froze the capture program.  It took me 30 minutes to work out why nothing was working properly  - the capture program gave me a "Codec" error instead of saying it couldn't access the hard drive!  Only when the laptop also shut down because of low voltage did I diagnose a voltage problem!

Mark

[The Thing]

I didn't have problems last night. Unlike at Rother Valley. Except my dew heater controller seems to be on the blink - or rather it keeps blinking. A dew heater controller virus in the air??????? I ran the mount from a seperate battery to make sure it didn't affect tracking.

[RobertM]

I suspect more issues tonight and if so then it might be plan C or D for this Saturday

[julian]

I had no problems last night - it was fantastic - I sold my mount (HEQ5 pro) and then went to bed.

[RobertM]

So did I - that was far too much grief for one day 

Just turned the Dew heater on and it's working

Need a beer !

[RobertM]

More woes last night - pc wouldn't talk to the mount for about 90 mins no matter which cables I changed/replugged etc.  Then it started working after I power cycled the PC.

SX Cooler has now started working - this is getting a bit freaky leaf !

Am starting to think the laptop could be the culprit - it's had at least 6 blue screens in the last couple of days and three of those were when I pulled usb cables out.

Could be a new astro laptop is on the cards - the old one is over 8 years old now and is looking more than a bit short of breath these days with colour imaging not withstanding all the issues this week.

Robert