Last week my scope blew over in the wind! It was scary and nerve-wracking, to say the least. My wife notified me by taking a cell phone picture through the kitchen window and emailing it to me at work. As you can see it was a sunny day with a good weather forecast. I usually remove the truss poles and collapse the scope into a "small" box, which has worked well for almost 2 years. Recently, though, I've started leaving the telescope set up fully assembled if there are several days in a row with good weather predicted. I guess the lesson is to use some sort of tiedown system, since it can get windy any time where I live. (Suggestions for such a system are certainly welcome!)
I had to leave right away. But when I got brave enough to inspect the damage, I found that one of the UTA clamps had broken, one of the knobs to attach the UTA had been damaged, and the wires to the altitude encoder had pulled loose. I called Eric to see about getting some replacement parts. He promised to get them sent the next day, and even though I planned on paying him for the parts, he insisted on providing them for free! Wow! Thanks, Eric!
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