Only in Melbourne...

[ving (David)]

thought you had given up and sold your gear sab

how the flight simmiing going? what do you use? (used to be a simmer too)

[Jen]

Originally Posted by §AB

You Know you're in Melbourne when....

-You have to use lighting to see at midday,
-Temperatures considered "warm" here are considered "cold to the rest of Australia,
-People who are allergic to sunlight can enjoy the outdoors without risk for most of the year,
-you find you have to wear a sweater during your beachside jog on a January afternoon,
-you start comparing your weather to Vancouver's, Scotland's or the Falkland's,
-british tourists feel right at home,
-Christmas day feels like a christmas day in London,
-the amount of cloudy days equals the cloudy days of all other capital cities put together
-you want to wage war on the other capitals because you're jealous of their superior climates,
-a forecast of fine weather ends up being cloudy and rainy
-everyone worldwide recognises your hometown from its crappy weather
-doing the washing becomes a bigger challenge than your final year calculus exam,
-you throw away your weather station because you discoverd a much cheaper alternative, fidning that you can count the number of clear days each winter on your hands

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

Having lived in Melbourne for the first year in Aus I can relate to them all, especially this one. "british tourists feel right at home". It was too much like the UK so I moved to WA.

Bill

[Terry B]

I feel sorry for you poor buggers down there. I have just returned from a 24hr trip to Melbourne.
Catching a taxi from the airport into the city last night I had a nice view of the sky. The light pollution was worse than a full moon here at home. I could see Jupiter and not much else. I can only be thankful that I live in the bush and have lovely dark skies.
I'm glad to be home (even with a headache from the crappy flying)

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by erick

I'm going to have a shot at Sunday night. I'll just need some ropes to tie the scope down if the predicted >50kph winds eventuate!

Not much wind but, no stars

[§AB]

Originally Posted by ving

thought you had given up and sold your gear sab

how the flight simmiing going? what do you use? (used to be a simmer too)

yer pretty crap. The new one (fsx) has s***house performance, the older one (fs2004) won't install.
All the features that make FSX worth having use up too much processing power and it gets pretty much unusable. Once the fs2004 issue is solved (hopefully), i'll be getting my 80 bucks back.

infact, I can have twice as much scenery activated on fs2004 and still get better performance than FSX.

[§AB]

well I've got fs2004 successfully installed (tried the other drive!!!) and WOW the performance is so great on my machine with all the sceneries set to high. I am getting 25-30 framerate on FS 2004 over Seattle, compared to 15 in FSX, and this is with twice the number of buildings, trees etc!!! I'm gonna take FSX back to the shop and use that 80 bucks to buy a couple of addons for fs2004

[§AB]

well well well yet a-freaking-gain, the story of the last 3 months has been played out. The forecast said fine from today thru till wednesday, but alas, yesterday that was amended to include showers from monday onwards.

And ofcourse, it is already cloudy. Already there is freaking high cloud streaming in.


http://www.weatherzone.com.au/satell...33&anc=3&lye=1

Surprise sur-bloody-prise. never seen such an unbelievable run of s*** in my entire life

[Stephen65]

Bloody annoying. Based on the forecast I felt sure that tonight would be good after the disappointment of last weekend but sure enough, a nice clear morning turns into a crap night.

[§AB]

well, I've been on uni holidays for 6 weeks and there has been not a single goddamn clear night. The people on the "other" forum laughed when I predicted that this would happen. Pfffft, shows what they know. I know for a fact that Sydney and Perth had a reasonable amount of clear nights during the last 6 weeks, so any whinging from them is UNACCEPTABLE The crap summer that Brisbane and Sydney so FAMOUSLY had this year DOESN'T COME ANYWHERE NEAR THE CRAP WE ARE SUFFERING RIGHT NOW. ALL sympathies for Melbourne only.

Only Melburnians have my sympathies. Everyone else in the other capitals bugger off! All the other capitals in this country wouldn't have a clue what real cloud is

now with uni starting, ther won't be a single goddamn chance until November.

[marki]

Originally Posted by §AB

well, I've been on uni holidays for 6 weeks and there has been not a single goddamn clear night. The people on the "other" forum laughed when I predicted that this would happen. Pfffft, shows what they know. I know for a fact that Sydney and Perth had a reasonable amount of clear nights during the last 6 weeks, so any whinging from them is UNACCEPTABLE The crap summer that Brisbane and Sydney so FAMOUSLY had this year DOESN'T COME ANYWHERE NEAR THE CRAP WE ARE SUFFERING RIGHT NOW. ALL sympathies for Melbourne only.

Only Melburnians have my sympathies. Everyone else in the other capitals bugger off! All the other capitals in this country wouldn't have a clue what real cloud is

now with uni starting, ther won't be a single goddamn chance until November.

I don't know why you moan so much. Where do you think all that weather comes from??? The fact that in the last 24 hours half of Perth has been blown to Adelaide, 24000 homes are without power and you need a submarine to go outside may indicate that we have our trials as well.

I have been on holiday for the past two weeks and have not even looked like getting the opportunity to use my gear. Whats worse is that on Monday I will be returning to work where I get to face 1200 odd screaming kids who have been locked up in their homes for two weeks due to the crappy weather (wont that be fun groannnn ). All you have to do is find a nice quiet spot at the back of the lecture theatre and have a snooze . So no, I have no sympathy what so ever, if you don't like it move.

[Dog Star (Phil)]

Hmmm. Hope this post doesn't go down badly.
I don't think it's any secret that here in The Alice we get bugger all rain (although we can cop a bit of cloud) Even so, viewing here is usually spot on about 95% of the time.
Reading the previous posts on this thread incites genuine sympathy from me as I can only imagine how fraustrating the situation is for so many of you. I remember how ticked off I was at missing the Venus/Jupiter conjunction earlier this year due to cloud cover. Complaining to Gargoyle Steve gained me no sympathy as he told me he hadn't had his scope out for weeks due to inclement weather.
All this has put me in the somewhat ironical situation that if I stay indoors of a night time (too cold, too tired, Moon too bright) I start to get an enormous attack of the Guilts, big time! What right, I think to myself, do I have to stay indoors when there are poor buggers all over the country who are desperate to get out and do some viewing. This has put me in a position where I'll go out and do a bit of viewing even if I don't particularly feel like it, even if it's just 10 mins or so with the nokkies, as opposed to setting up the Dob.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but your misfortune motivates me to take advantage of the conditions I've been geographicly blessed with.
If it's any consolation at all, at least you mob probably aren't glancing about on the ground in Summer watching for Western browns and mulga snakes (who also enjoy being out and about on a clear Summer's night)
Again, I cannot stress too strongly that this is a genuine expression of sympathy; no sarcasm intended whatsoever.
May the Weather Gods look kindly on you all in the future.

[Alchemy (Clive)]

SABs pretty much right about melbourne weather, its been very poor for astronomy, and for some considerable time.
I have found other things to do........

As for Alice springs .... nice place to visit but 45 deg every day in summer..... pass on that thankyou.

[§AB]

Originally Posted by marki

I don't know why you moan so much.

If you lived in Melbourne you'd know......

Where do you think all that weather comes from??? The fact that in the last 24 hours half of Perth has been blown to Adelaide, 24000 homes are without power and you need a submarine to go outside may indicate that we have our trials as well.

we had 2 episodes of massive wind (april 2 and another just recently) plus during the last 2016 hours it's been cloudy,. cloudy, cloudy. 400,000 people without power that day.

I have been on holiday for the past two weeks and have not even looked like getting the opportunity to use my gear.

two weeks? hahaha my ribs are about to split wide open! Try 3 months

Whats worse is that on Monday I will be returning to work where I get to face 1200 odd screaming kids who have been locked up in their homes for two weeks due to the crappy weather (wont that be fun groannnn ).

well it was your career choice wasn't it?

All you have to do is find a nice quiet spot at the back of the lecture theatre and have a snooze . So no, I have no sympathy what so ever, if you don't like it move.

In theory yes. In reality.....it's a life consuming mental struggle but I want a decent career so I have to do it.

[marki]

Ha ha ha only pulling your leg mate . I have lived in Melbourne so I have a fair idea what its like. It never inspired me to take up astronomy as a hobby as you rarely saw the stars. You probably need to find another pastime to fill in while you wait. When I was there in 1999 I used to take my Ducati up to the black spur and scare the living crap out of myself, always felt better after that . Looking on the bright side, when I went out this morning there was nothing but blue skys so it should be heading your way soon. Hang in there it's not all bad and summer is not too far away.

Mark

[AndrewJ]

Re

now with uni starting, there won't be a single goddamn chance until November.

I remember a quote on a blackboard at Uni many years ago
"Fail now, avoid the November rush"
If you keep that in mind, any clear nights become available

Andrew

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Well SAB no observin here tonight with a severe weather warning for strong winds ...ole scope will act as a wind sock out in it ...north wind too looks like its heading south it may dust all you melbournians out....cheers Kev.

[§AB]

I don't care if the winds were 10000km/h, wouldn't make a difference.

I have $5000 worth of equipment serving nothing more as room ornaments

[§AB]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Re


I remember a quote on a blackboard at Uni many years ago
"Fail now, avoid the November rush"
If you keep that in mind, any clear nights become available

Andrew

lol! but I want to get a decent career! hows 60k starting salary, plus car and super ;D

[overlord (Charles)]

Originally Posted by §AB

well, I've been on uni holidays for 6 weeks and there has been not a single goddamn clear night. The people on the "other" forum laughed when I predicted that this would happen. Pfffft, shows what they know. I know for a fact that Sydney and Perth had a reasonable amount of clear nights during the last 6 weeks, so any whinging from them is UNACCEPTABLE The crap summer that Brisbane and Sydney so FAMOUSLY had this year DOESN'T COME ANYWHERE NEAR THE CRAP WE ARE SUFFERING RIGHT NOW. ALL sympathies for Melbourne only.

Only Melburnians have my sympathies. Everyone else in the other capitals bugger off! All the other capitals in this country wouldn't have a clue what real cloud is

now with uni starting, ther won't be a single goddamn chance until November.

Hello, God here.

SAB,

Your lamentations against my weather decisions have been most grieving to me. Your ingratitude stings me most grieviously. As punishment, I have decided to implement a further punitive measure of not less than two months of gut-wrenchingly miserable weather, which will be imperfect, in the least, for your astronomical purposes.

Your Humble Creator.