[Leica] Painful separation

[Alastair Firkin <firkin@netconnect.com.au>]

Dear Friends,

I finally bowed to the "needful", and took my errant R8 and Winder in to
Leica. I did all I could to avoid the separation, but when last month, I
fired off 5 or 6 frames of a stained glass window, merely by touching the
shutter release to check the light reading I knew it was crying out for
help. One of my "inner" excuses had been that taking it in to Adeal [our
service provider] was very inconvenient, but it turns out, that they are
just off the freeway on the way to Melbourne, and almost ideally situated
for us Ballarat LUGnuts. Still I tried to convince them that they would
only need the winder, and begged them to check with Solms before I parted
with the lot. When I finally got on to the "dedicated" technician, I was
told that they were not fully R8 trained [too few in Australia] and that
anything other than one or two "modules" were shipped back to Germany.

Modules I asked. Yes they receive their training and repair parts in
"bits". One bit that has been too universal for Solms to avoid Australia is
the winder modification "number" one where the eyelets for the gold
contacts on the base of the R8 are widened, and the pins on the winder are
"extended" to improve the contact. Sadly, this is not my problem. I've only
had a "failure" to operate on one occasion. The multi-firing problem was a
'new' one to them, so it looks as if the separation will be long and
painful. 6-8 weeks turn around as a minimum. :-(((

I was asked if I was a pro, and I told them no. [would/should this really
make a difference? Pehaps they may have loaned me a body?] I would have
been a very hungry pro if I was going without work for 2 months ;-)  One of
the other reasons for delaying as long as possible, apart from the pain of
separation, was that I was hoping that any other "faults" and standard
modifications would become known, and could be fixed at the same time. I
left an older 50 on the body, so if you are listening Leica you could make
me happy to suffer this inconvenience if you would be kind enough to "ROM"
it up and get it home "priority" :-) Cold spring day today, India [my
puppy] on the lap, and lots of work to do.

Cheers

Alastair Firkin,

http://users.netconnect.com.au/~firkin/AGFhmpg.html