Hi Mark,
It's natural to be nervous for your first star party, but when you get there, you'll be fine I'm sure.
The registration kit will contain the answers to a lot of your questions. This starts getting sent out to attendees around the end of March.
1) Arrive any time on Friday after 9am. Just make sure you leave yourself enough to set up your tent etc in daylight. Because it is hard to do under red light.
2) Yes. But please note that you may not set up your tent on the observing field.
3) No, there is only a dinner on Saturday night. However the Kandos Scouts provide hot food throughout the event. Please contact John O'Brien (treasurer@asnsw.com) and explain that you bought too many tickets for the roast. He'll help to sort you out with a refund or credit.
4) I don't think there is a proper ettiquette. This will only be my 4th SPSP, but I've found it better to go out and start talking to people, rather than waiting for them to come to you.
I think you also had a question about your car complience. You need to be able to demostrate that you can open/close all doors and boot, lock and unlock the car without setting off any lights. This is becoming more difficult for modern cars, so sometime a trip to an auto-electrician is needed to fix this. But please think about whether you really need your car on the observing field. I just drive on, drop off my telescope on the Friday, park the car near my tent for the rest of the event and then pick it back up on the Sunday.
If you've got any more questions, please feel free to ask here, or send them to
starparty@asnsw.com.
Cheers and hope you have a great time there.
