The previous evening to the Xanthippe event was nice and clear so I did a practice run doing things like finding the star and taking a picture of the field on the screen using my iPhone so I knew exactly which star was which. I also found out that the OccuRec software for recording the video was playing up and so I sort of found a way around that issue well ahead of time. Am still on a learning curve as to how to set up to avoid disappointment but hopefully we’ll have many more similar opportunities to go after in the future. But a practice run beforehand is a great idea.
(P.S. For the Titan/28 Sgr occultation in 1989, we were able to do a dry-run at the same clock time as the real event the next day – it made all the difference then too!)