The ASV Star B Que at LMDSS Saturday December 3
So I managed to head up Saturday morning. Intended to mainly run an imaging stup and as I was using our smaller car, did not have room for a dob. Luckily Barry C was also going so he took the 20" up with him. (More about that later) Arrived early afternoon, a few about so started to setup on the nearly empty imaging field. Barry arrived an hour or so later so we setup the dob.
Crowd was building nicely by late afternoon so had a bite from the Lions trailer. Had a chat with Dimitry and along with a few others we made up a team for the trivia, fell a point short of winning, but most of the answers were guesses anyway!!
Night was looking really clear so keen to get out. Collimated and setup the dob inly to discover that the Argo was not operating
any hoo managed to at least set it up so Barry could use it with just a red dot finder. Started to get the imaging kit going and the EQMOD Bluetooth adaptor was not working!!
Luckly I had a cable so fired that up and managed to remeber how to change port settings so was able to get some data on NGC 7293 (Helix) M42 and NGC 3372 (Eta Carina nebula) ended up imaging until sunrise. Had a few chats with Simmo and some uni students who had come up as well as several others, but with my usual propensity for forgetting names I cannot sa who!! The crowd was LARGE. I would have guessed easily more than 200 there with lots of families, groups of students and newbies so very well done ASV. The main field was very crowded, really had to be careful walking around. Only a handful on the imaging field which was interesting?
Thoroughly enjoyable day and night, some equipment issues were not good but totally worth it!!
Malcolm
)but i didnt have the pier plate adaptor thing. i got some spectacular shots, one thing is that the plate with the ball head adaptor on the ioptron came loose (pitch black,turned the wrong screw 
