This happened to me on my 3rd night out with the LX50 and from what I’ve read elsewhere, it is a pretty common problem. In my case, some keys didn’t work, and the declination axis worked only in one direction. Don’t panic if this happens to you! All that’s going on is that a connector inside the hand controller has come loose.
If you open up the controller it should be pretty obvious what’s going wrong.
Remove the 2 screws on the back of the controller and pull off the back plastic panel. Inside you’ll find the circuit board connected to the front of the controller (where the keys are) by a blue connector. (Circled in red in the picture) This is what has come loose. Just push it back in, pop the back on, screw it in place and everything should be fine again.
I used some electrical tape over the connector and the back of the circuit board to keep it in place, and it has been fine since.
This one really spooked me. I was finishing up for the night with a quick look at Orion. I aimed, locked the RA and DEC, and noticed that with the RA locked I could move the scope in a left-right motion very slightly. More or less half a centimeter of travel. Yikes!
I took the scope inside and plonked it on the kitchen table with both the RA and DEC axis UNLOCKED. (This bit is very, very important! When you lay the scope on its side, you’re putting pressure on parts that weren’t make to take a lot of weight. If you have an axis locked you could force the scope and really break something.)
