I lent my Meade LX90 8" to my nephew in Adelaide - very bright lad who hooked up his DSLR and took some amazing shots of the moon and jupiter with it. The telescope was driven down to Adelaide and after a long term loan it was shipped back to me in Sydney. The shippers did the packing up of the telescope (as my nephew was at uni inter-state). Unfortunately in the process they ended up with a spare bolt - I think from the finderscope. Anyway, rather than tape the bolt to the scope, they popped it into the main optical tube through the eyepiece holder ring! Unfortunately I was busy with other projects so didn't open the box for a number of months, at which point I was quite horified with what I saw. Without thinking I immediately opened up the tube via the screws adjacent to the collimation screws. This allowed me to extract the bolt but then the entire collimation piece dropped back into the optical tube. I then decided to stop all losses and drove it down to our friendly folk at Bintel. Fortunately the damage was minimal but the repair was still a few $100!!! Moral - pack up the telescope yourself or by somebody who knows what they're doing for transport; don't unscrew parts unless you're clear on the consequences and if in doubt get professional
