19
My star tracker mount fought me for 3 hours over a tiny washer
Got a new star tracker last month and spent an entire evening at Cherry Springs State Park trying to align it, but the declination knob kept jamming. Turns out the screw had a thin brass washer that was slightly bent during shipping, and it took me a solid 3 hours to notice it in my headlamp's red light. I nearly packed the whole trip up because Polaris was mocking me from directly overhead. Has anyone else had a mount issue that turned out to be something dumb and tiny like that?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
joseph4551mo ago
...and honestly I'm not sure three hours was even necessary here. A bent washer is annoying but you can usually fix that in five minutes with a pair of pliers or just flipping it over. Plus Cherry Springs has decent cell service these days, so you could've looked up the manual while sitting in your car. Seems like you wanted it to be a bigger deal than it was, which happens to all of us when the sky is clear and nothing works. I've done the same thing with a stuck clutch knob that turned out to just need a firmer twist.
4