Do the experienced guys still have unsuccessful nights?

[tomato]

Martin makes a really good point regarding the relationship between the quantity of equipment/sophistication and the level of frustration encountered.

The first success I had was piggy backing an SLR with a 50 mm lens on a moderately polar aligned GEM. Got some shots of the Milky Way with the dust lanes visible, this spurred me on to attempt the trickier stuff and I've been grappling with this ever since.

[salas]

Not particularly experienced, but from rigging up to finally getting some images there are always some challenges, which sometimes involve bad language! I think the biggest issues I have are comms between my laptop, mount & guide camera via a multi usb hub. Numerous restarts required and sometimes having to delete "ini" files in EQMOD to get stuff working.

Big tip - make sure you're laptop has completed any updates before heading out as this can be infuriating when you've spent ages setting up for you PC to decide it needs to do some updating (which can take ages)

As every one else says the more software and hardware you run the more likely issues come up - but you need them all 

[r3i]

What makes this hobby so brilliant for me is that there IS so much to get right.

.

Very true - it certainly isn't an 'instant gratification' pursuit, and all the better for it.