The short of a long story.  Traveled to Panamint Valley (towards Death Valley) on the recent new moon. Version B - clouds were gone by 9pm.  I'm the only soul around for 25 miles. 🤪 Night one – SQL 22.58 but too windy to image. 😩 The skies were magnificent but stars a twinkling.  Next day forecast was for wind and more wind.  I decided to pack up and go to a dispersed campsite in the mountains above Ridgecrest on Short Canyon Rd. as no wind forecast.  Made it up the dirt road to the first area to park but entrance road was washed out.  Started up to the next pullout but saw the road was getting too sandy.  Stopped, backup up and got stuck in the sand, Version C.  Spent 4+ hours digging out, moving a little back and forth and almost got out but then hit deeper sand.  The tow company wanted $1,200 to get me out paid upfront.  No way!  So spent the night there.  Too tired to setup scopes.  Had a beer and slept well.   Next morning my son-in-law texted me that there is a Facebook group “Ridgecrest, I.W.V. Offroad Recovery”!   I messaged them and within a half hour 4 off-road vehicles arrived and winched me out free of charge.  I gave a good donation to the group.   These guys were tremendous!  version D.  While pulling me out, my 102GT, which was on my bed and not secured like I usually do, fell!  Oh no. 😥

Got home and had to test if damaged.  Had some time between clouds.  First images were terrible, major tilt in opposite directions, ouch, version E 😩.  It was actually much worse...this is after tweaking the tilt, best I could get.  Next night I switched cameras…same major issues. 😩 ...so it wasn't the camera. 😀  Next night I removed the filter wheel, switched to a OSC camera and used a slider drawer resulting in perfect everything!  😀 version F.  The scope and camera were not damaged!  I got lucky indeed.  Next night, put the filter wheel back on…terrible.  Got to buy a new filter wheel, 🤑 but better than a new scope or camera. 😀   The resulting image of M101 was captured for testing using my mono and OSC cameras.  Not bad considering the short testing time, from my backyard and wasn't imaging for a result.   Got lucky indeed!   -john

March 20 update:  I ordered a new EWF from Agena Astro.  It arrived next day.  Especially perfect result without tweaking, version I.  Figured I should make a better go at M101 so captured more data in-between clouds the next 3 nights.  New version looks good...well at least as good as my B7 backyard will allow, version J. 😀