I have had a few, some more Murphy's Law than forgetfulness.
Set up for a kindergarten night to show the kids Saturn, the moon and some bright stars. plugged in the fully charged battery pack. Nothing. the fuse had blown on the power plug... 20 minutes scurrying around at home later I found a spare glass fuse...
Took my stuff for the drive to my dark site on the family farm 5 hours drive away. Got there and realised my CCD was in the garage at home... ah well, 2 beautiful nights of visual viewing anyway.
Set up the stuff in the backyard just a week ago to image. Beautiful polar alignment, tracking was delightful, but I could not get it to guide. PHD kept telling me the star didn't move sufficiently. Hmmmm. After 5 minutes of exasperation, I realised that the guide cable was not plugged into the motor control board....
Bought an introductory level CCD once. Brand new. Excitedly unwrapped it and attached it to the scope - with a masked objective - to do some testing during the day. Something was wrong - the channels were out and not overlapping to form the image, so I unscrewed it from the telescope...and dropped it onto the concrete garage floor! The backplate screws sheared... the backplate went this-a-way, the camera went that-a-way. It was literally 30 minutes old... Anyway, I found some screws, put it back together and surprise of surprises, it STILL worked, and the channels were STILL out of alignment. Insurance paid for that one
