The continuing adventures of a doofus.....

[Tim]

I wonder how long I will keep making newbie mistakes?

Last night, following a sudden influx of cloud, I decided to take a series of flat frames for the images I have been taking over the last few weeks.

To do this, I slew my scope into an upright position, stop the tracking, and balance the flat panel on the top. I suppose the top of the scope is nearly 8 feet from the floor, and the flat panel is A3 size and weighs a couple of kilos.

I set the run  going, which in itself contained a list of errors, wrong colours in wrong folders etc, and left it to it. The camera is quite a large CCD, each file is 22mb, so it takes a while for the run to finish, especially the Ha flats which are 30 seconds each.

When it was finished, without thinking, I just set the mount to park.............CRASH!  Flat panel and wiring everywhere. Need to closely inspect today, see if anything badly  broke :/

Tell me I am not the only one? Been doing this for 9 years, you'd think somehow would get the hang of it!

[Psychobilly]

Ouch - I feel you pain - hopefully nothings broken that cant be fixed

[HowardHopkinson]

14 minutes ago, Tim said:

I wonder how long I will keep making newbie mistakes?

Last night, following a sudden influx of cloud, I decided to take a series of flat frames for the images I have been taking over the last few weeks.

To do this, I slew my scope into an upright position, stop the tracking, and balance the flat panel on the top. I suppose the top of the scope is nearly 8 feet from the floor, and the flat panel is A3 size and weighs a couple of kilos.

I set the run  going, which in itself contained a list of errors, wrong colours in wrong folders etc, and left it to it. The camera is quite a large CCD, each file is 22mb, so it takes a while for the run to finish, especially the Ha flats which are 30 seconds each.

When it was finished, without thinking, I just set the mount to park.............CRASH!  Flat panel and wiring everywhere. Need to closely inspect today, see if anything badly  broke :/

Tell me I am not the only one? Been doing this for 9 years, you'd think somehow would get the hang of it!

You're definitely not alone in making silly mistakes mate. I make quite a few myself as I'm sure other do too. I hope you've not done too much damage.

[Stephen Green]

I hope that there is not to much damage Tim, I have put my 66mm scope on to 11" for got to check that as I open the roof that it would not hit the scope, I clipped the top of the rings not much damage I was lucky  

Stepehn

[wuthton]

You're not alone, I've done it too. Luckily I managed to catch mine before it hit the floor. 

[ngwillym]

Did similar- but fortunately - only with bathinov mask - and the floor has got rubber matting

[laudropb]

We have all done something similar. Hope you have escaped with out too much damage.

[Chris-A]

5 hours ago, Tim said:

I wonder how long I will keep making newbie mistakes?

Last night, following a sudden influx of cloud, I decided to take a series of flat frames for the images I have been taking over the last few weeks.

To do this, I slew my scope into an upright position, stop the tracking, and balance the flat panel on the top. I suppose the top of the scope is nearly 8 feet from the floor, and the flat panel is A3 size and weighs a couple of kilos.

I set the run  going, which in itself contained a list of errors, wrong colours in wrong folders etc, and left it to it. The camera is quite a large CCD, each file is 22mb, so it takes a while for the run to finish, especially the Ha flats which are 30 seconds each.

When it was finished, without thinking, I just set the mount to park.............CRASH!  Flat panel and wiring everywhere. Need to closely inspect today, see if anything badly  broke :/

Tell me I am not the only one? Been doing this for 9 years, you'd think somehow would get the hang of it!

Definitely not alone - I probably do this every third imaging run and never learn, so easy to do when you are running things remotely. It's not so bad now I have an obsy, was much worse when my EL panel would be thrown on the flags outside in the garden and wake the neighbours up at 5am.

Every time I tell myself I will add some sort of sleeve to the EL panel so it fits snugly over the scope and I can do my flats at the parked position, always seem to have forgotten by the following morning though!

[Psychobilly]

That why I ended up hanging my panel on the wall...

 

[Davey-T]

Had the tripod indoors and had put the counterweight on top as it fitted nicely in the circle where the mount goes, unfortunately this camouflaged it nicely so when I moved the tripod it shot off making a nice circular dent on my oak floor, didn't mark the counterweight, lucky it missed my foot

Dave

[PeterCPC]

Totalled a Bahtinov mask recently like that.

Peter

[Scott]

Yep, done it too @Tim, maybe this is why just about every flat panel you see has the cable taped in

 

[reddoss]

Thanks for the tip.

 

I have just bought a Huion LED light panel which I will (hopefully) be using at SGL X11. Lets hope I don't make the same mistake.