This event coincided with our Astro 28J trip to Sequoia National Monument in the southern Sierra. The path went centrally across our site with high accuracy, so I was looking forward to getting some science done. However, the magnitude drop was only 0.3 and the event was at 17 degrees altitude, so videorecording was essential. I got up an hour ahead of the event after setting everything up before going to sleep. The trees across the meadow made it hard to identify Libra, and it took 10 minutes before I realized the star pattern I was looking at was not the balance beam of Libra but a similar feature in Virgo. Gah! So I picked up the scope and equipment and moved it 30 feet to find Libra. Finding the star went fairly efficiently, but the problem now was that I was using the f/6.3 focal reducer for the first time and had no idea how this would affect the focus. I should've practiced, but the hectic class activities up till 1am after the 6 hour drive... I just didn't do it. The result was that I couldn't get the thing to focus. In fact, focus was only 1.5 turns away from focus with the 40mm eyepiece, but I figured it would be way off and spent 10 minutes or more racking in and out and in and out all the way, probably going right past proper focus each time. The other problem is that the drive had de-collimated the finderscope so I couldn't even find stars in the tiny chip field. All this, and sleep deprivation hindered figuring out what to do about it all. Finally, with 4 minutes left, I pulled everything off and tried it visually, but the 0.3 mag drop was just too little to notice in the mediocre seeing.
Result: No data!