have you ever dropped your OTA?

[duncan]

yeah the wait is painful alright,LOL

[astroron (Ron)]

My 13mm Nagler slipped out of my star diaganal, I heard it go and put my foot out to stop it hitting the concrete floor, I saved the Nagler but broke one of my toes as I had no shoes on, I still have a funny shaped toe as I just bound it up to the toe next to it .
I had a limp for a few days then all was back to normal.
I put carpet with underlay on the floor rearl quick.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Originally Posted by doogal

hehe im having a bit of a giggle at these stories of misfortune i knew there had to be some funny tales out there.

You won't be giggling when it happens to you Doogal.

[leon]

I only thing i have bounced across the yard was my 135mm Olympus lens, as i was walking in the dark, tripped forward, and the lens went flying, landed on the lawn, no damaged done, but i was lucky.

Leon

[astroron (Ron)]

Apost script to my last post, the 13mm Nagler is a type 1 which weighs about half a kilogram or one pound, and fell from about 1 metre. OUCH

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Poor Ron.
If you like, I'll take that Nagler off your hands so it doesn't happen again.

[astroron (Ron)]

jjj I couldn't do that as I would feel real bad if it injured you to.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

well none of these tales so far match up with a guy who comes to Linden Observatory-Bruce -who dropped his 11 inch Celestron SCT and wound up-in his own words with "an expensive kaleidoscope" sitting atop his Losmandy G11

or was it a C14 ? now I cant remember

shudder

[leon]

Actually I heard of a fellow who tried to put is 12" LX200 on a pier by himself, over balanced, and the rest was history, you can guess what happened to the scope.

Leon

[sheeny (Al)]

Fortunately I haven't dropped mine... yet...


but...


I cleaned the corrector plat on my C8 not long ago. I had the OTA sitting on my lap so I could see what I was doing. Finished cleaning the corrector and went to put the OTA up on the table...

Donk!!!

Hit the finder scope on the edge of the table and knocked it out of its mount.

Luckily, no real damage done... a quick look around to make sure no one was watching....


Al.

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

I didn't "drop" it...but it fell off the tripod! I didn't do the dovetail up properly and when I tipped it over to check the balance it crashed to the lawn. As a result I am reluctant to set up on concrete. Since then I have modified the dovetail so that it is almost impossible for it to fall again.

The main damage was bending the finder bracket...fortunately!

[bojan]

I have been through that experience all the way, and the early morning dew (just before last Mercury transit) was to blame... Had to replace the secondary as a consequence. AND I added the handle on the top of the tube so it will not happen again, I hope :-)

[GrahamL]

Ouch I know that one well ron ,couple of weeks back I went to grab my wife a staff drink from the bar fridge at her work ,around midnight and in a hurry I set off a bottle roll from the top of the fridge , got my foot under the first one ,it so hurt , and the next one to , I was so amazed looking at the two unbroken bottles on the floor i missed the third ones silent roll off the shelf landing on the unbroken two and breaking all three
sore foot covered in glass and beer

I have dropped my telrad on the concrete and bump my ota on the odd wall now and then

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by tailwag

....and what of astro insurance? I suppose it comes under household insurance

I insured my apo with NRMA against theft and breakage under household insurance. Thay said it was the first time that they had insured a telescope.
Geoff

[Calin]

Yes ... heart in mouth .... obligatory language, for a couple of secs ... then picked it up off the ground dusted it off, put it back on mount ... properly secured this time ... checked collimation and continued observing ... s**t happens .....

No point in getting a knot in the gut over it ... if it breaks, it's broken, hard luck. I still have me eyes and the sky has not fallen ... if it did break ... good excuse to get a new one ...

[middy]

A couple of weeks after buying my 8" Dob I was moving it from one area of the back garden to another. While shuffling across the concrete section I suddenly lost my balance and started to fall forward with the scope. It was only a short distance to the lawn and I managed to stumble forward a few more steps onto the grass while the scope was on its way down. The base touched down on the grass with a loud thump and the OTA made some scary metallic creaking noises. After my heart restarted itself and I had called myself a few choice words I checked the scope out and found it to be still OK.

[doogal]

lol middy yea thats the funny part i reckon, its usually always our own silly fault for tryin to take short cuts or rushing things that lead to such events