Your most expensive equipment accident?

[DavidU]

I once dropped a very nice pair of 7x50's onto the concrete some years ago. I also remember one ISS member dropped his Tak:eyepop:
Anyone have a horror story?

[Kevnool]

Nope i,m the lucky one.
Cheers Kev.

[MrB]

My next one.

[GeoffW1]

Hi,

Not too horrendous I suppose - I crunched an Argo Navis encoder on the doorjamb when wheeling the dob out of the garage.

It did not encode afterward.

Cheers

[DavidU]

Ooooh no ! Nasty. Are they expensive?

[TrevorW]

I stepped onto a pair of glasses which had fallen off a table next to the scope one night, lens OK frames mangled

[theodog]

My cat rode my 10" to the groung after jumping from the obs wall. Damaged the sockets for the G11's RA motor cable.
I had new 3 meter cables built and hard-wired into the motors circuit board.
The cat is a little reluctant to go near the obs now.

[Ric]

So far (touch wood) I've had a broken crosshair in the finder scope.

The hardest part was finding a hair long enough to replace it :rofl:, well on my head anyway. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Cheers

[GeoffW1]

$97 + post $16 + self-flagellation free. Now all is good.

[sadia]

One night after observing for 2hrs walked into the clear glass door with 10" newtonian in the dark thinking it was open :screwy:. Minor scratch in front of the tube but had to replace the whole glass door ....auuuchhh! woke up my neighbours i bet.

[Barrykgerdes]

When I first got my LX200 15 years ago I accidently pushed the keypad cable into the RS232 socket. It went in crooked and put volts onto the wrong lines. It wasn't covered by warranty and not knowing much about the LX200 at the time (I have learnt a lot since). I wasn't sure what had happened but I could still work the telescope with a computer program I wrote.

I managed to get a new board as part of an upgrade kit and a new handbox. Total cost $1700. When I got the upgrade kit it also had a new handbox and the new ROMs. I got the scope working again in about a week.

Later I repared the original handbox with a new 74LS14 chip so I then had two spare hand boxes, and I eventually repaired the damaged motherboard when I knew more about the electronics.

The initial cost may have been high, higher than necessary, but the experience gained enabled me to keep the LX200 going for the next 15 years. It still works great.

Barry

[torana68]

does when I first met my now ex wife count? ;)

[Satchmo]

Breaking the Flourite ( genuine Flourite not the Chinese `Flourite') element of my Vixen 70mm F8 Vixen Apo refractor one night. I had taken the screw on lens hood off to clean the front element and cross threaded the hood when trying to get it back on. Light bulb goes on and I grab a rubber ballet and give the hood a fairly benign tap to get it back on the correct thread.

Theres an immediate `chink' and I look in to see one element clean split in two. These optical tubes were about 4 weeks wages in 1985. All I could do was laugh as it felt a lot better than crying which was my only alternative :)

[PeterM]

As a young boy watching the Sky At Night - by accident. Some 40 years later it has cost me a fortune....
PeterM.

[leon]

Na nothing to serious yet, other than the a wheel coming off my roll away observatory, leaving it stuck half open until I could force it back onto the rails a few hours later, at minus 1. :lol: :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[MrB]

Mark! ouch!!

[Blue Skies]

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

[bird]

Destroyed both the G11 gemini mainboard and one f the motors last year... making a set of homebrew cables to connect the motors and didnt realise I had one of the pinouts upside down... connected +5v to ground through the low resistance encoder wires on the motor...

I'm more careful now, that cost me about > $1k to fix.

Bird

[erick]

Ouch!

[DavidU]

Chink..... AHHHHHHHH ! that would make me feel sick ! Love your mirrors BTW

[AstralTraveller]

Mark, you would have a very good measure of that period of time called the 'ohnosecond' - the period between doing something stupid and realising just how stupid it was. I've measured it myself many times but I can't recall such a spectacular example (although breaking all the ceramic rods in an ion source last year was pretty 'good' - except it wasn't my money).

[Satchmo]

:lol:

[Phil]

As the old saying goes best way to learn something is by your mistakes.
As for most expensive equipment accident it was not astronomy but it was a $4500 LCD screen that cracked when i put it in my car when i moved not long ago.
Phil

[Jen]

When i accidently came across these forums one day while surfing the net :rofl::rofl::rofl: Ever since i havnt been able to stay away and looks like my shopping list gets bigger each week :lol::lol:
:D:D:D

[White Rabbit]

I recently bought the shoestring gpusb thingo and made the cable myself. Not realizing that I had some solder touching two of the pins. Plugged it in and toasted it instantly, $80 vaporized.

[Nesti]

It wasn't astronomy related. Before and after pics explain it I think. :sadeyes:

H-Stab failure.

Price...LOL...lets I was flying a radio controlled Televue NP101is OT. :screwy:

[Inmykombi]

ouch !!!!

I certainly hope it flew again.

Cheers.

[MrB]

LOL Mark, that scene is familiar to me, tho none of mine were worth quite that much!

[Nesti]

Yes, it seems that it will fly again. The trick was to wait until I found someone who car repair the [carbon fibre] wings properly. Everything else is fairly cheap. Some people just know how to fix stuff.

[Inmykombi]

Good luck with that, it looks like a decent size model that would be both fun and challenging to fly.

Cheers.