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I have never really had "The Ugly" but have certainly had the good and the bad.
14 years old and using a telescope borrowed from my school (An old Meade 114 newt on an EQ mount which I somehow set up well enough to use) basically just pointing randomly, found a couple of what were presumably visual doubles (Rather than proper double stars) and then after yet another random point, BAM, Saturn in all it's glory. Instantly hooked.
The bad was a couple of years ago, my then quite new Celestron CPC925 and we had some friends over for a viewing night. My son (Then about 4) was messing around (With an old spark plug, sorry, "Spaceship") and as I looked away "Docked" it in the PC port of the CPC mount. Not even a fizzle or burst of smoke, but it was dead! Temporarily fixed when I found that a buffer chip had died and was tying the signal line between the hand controller and main control board to ground by the expedient of cutting the chip off the board with a razor blade (No way I would be able to desolder a little surface mount chip with the gear I had)
I actually fixed it properly eventually when I could convince the service agent that I was actually a tech and knew what I was doing and WAS NOT going to ship the thing to them so they could charge me to fault find and replace the interface board that I already knew was faulty. I guess you could call that the ugly, I pretty much had to tell them that I would find a way to buy the board from the US directly before they would sell me a $20 PCB that should cost about $5, it is the size of a credit card with two small connector headers, two RJ sockets that poke through the top panel of the mount base and a bi directional buffer chip on it.
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