Tripod leg locked up mid-shot, my 45 minute Orion Nebula stack got ruined
I was set up at a dark spot off Route 66 outside Flagstaff, about 2 in the morning, doing a 45 minute run on Orion's core with my old EQ mount. Everything was tracking smooth until the wind picked up, and one of the twist locks on my aluminum tripod just seized, like the plastic collar decided to weld itself to the metal. I had to wrestle the whole rig down while the camera was still snapping frames, and in the chaos the scope shifted hard, so every single sub after that had those ugly star trails. I managed to fix the lock with a pair of channel locks and some WD-40, but the damage was done, I only got 12 clean frames left to stack. Now I'm wondering if I should just buy a sturdier carbon fiber set of legs or stick with the old one and hope it was a one time thing. Has anyone else had a sudden gear failure kill a whole imaging session, and did you end up upgrading or just learning the workaround?