hahaha... You definitely can JJJ... I found after a while up there I didnt even need my torch to dig through the spaghetti central of cables on my rig! (you'll be glad to know my cable count has dropped significantly... )
That photo shows the actual chessboard. It's a paved area where you can play chess with massive chess pieces. I don;t remember seeing the chess pieces however. They'd be there someplace. Gotta be there to grasp it I guess
At the bottom of those stairs in the photo is the open grassy area jjj mentioned, which may be suitable for photography but as I remember there are tall trees to the east.
There is also a motion activated fluro near the chessboard with is truely annoying even though steve, mick and the gang wrapped all lights in red plastic etc, we couldn't figure out how to kill that light or the motion detector. The fluro was a sealed unit. I'm thinking to find and wrap the detector in alfoil next time. It will either be off or on after that
The chess pieces are there, they normally sit in between the 2 toilet blocks in the thoroughfare area. It's definitely a real chessboard Wes, plus there's bits for playing draughts too - unfortunately those imaging whacko's cover it all up with their wizz-burr-click-beepbeep gear.
The observing field is huge, we end up using only a smaller portion of it, and so far no one has ever used the East side. Plenty of room mate, would be great to see you there this time!
(Apologies to all Dark Sky Camp enthusiasts for my infrequent, and short lived, visits here to IIS recently. Due to some reorganising of workstations, data routing, etc at work we've had no internet access there for a few weeks - which is where I do most of my forum posting. I've also been busy with other real life stuff, and ramping up for Barambah of course! I should be online here more frequently again now - Fingers crossed! Randall, alias Dr Morbius, has been efficiently handling all the registration paperwork for this camp again to help take the load off me - Bless Him! )
Last edited by Gargoyle_Steve; 24-03-2009 at 05:57 AM.
Thanks Steve ,
I think I have the nod from the secretary so will register soon. As far as the motion sensor light is concerned ,Is there a care taker you could talk to ,to maybe isolate that circuit?? I had a look at the previous camp photos ( thanks Ron) ....The field looks FAB...
Cheers Wes
Those motion triggered lights exist on the "verandah" of all 4 dorm buildings as a night time safety feature - they are switch controlled, you can have them on ALL the time, or only for a minute or so when they pic up movement. However they only trigger as far as I know when someone actually walks up the stairs and onto the verandah!
No one mentioned anything about this problem light at the last camp so this is the first I've heard about it. Short of taking the cover off and actually removing the fluoro tube I don't know that we can do anything else about it - they ARE safety lights after all, placed there because without them at night it's SO DAMN DARK !!!!
All I can say is that once we're at Barambah again if someone can show me exactly which light is the problem one I'll chase it up and see what I can do.
PS: This of course does NOT affect the Observing Field in any way at all, so visual observers please don't be concerned, and I can't see how it could POSSIBLY compete with the light output of the imagers laptops, etc, so it shouldn't be much of a problem to them either, I'm surprised they even noticed......
Hopefully we'll be right by then Robin for nice clear skies! Alex bought his nice new RC scope with enough leadtime before the camp for the Sky Gods to have forgotten by then (I hope anyway!)
Looking forward to seeing it in action Alex, it should be sweet.
With the latest registrations ( good on ya Ron and Jeanette) there's now 20 people registered for the Saturday night, which as usual will see the biggest crowd - some are coming up Thursday for the full 4 nights, and others for lesser periods, some literally only staying for the single night. I know from emails we've received that there's still other people considering their options that haven't registered yet too, but that still leaves plenty of beds, and plenty of dark sky, to go around so if anyone is still fence sitting make plans to be there for this camp!
Head on over to the website now www.darkskycamp.org.au and register - the Camp starts just 2 weeks from today.
Last edited by Gargoyle_Steve; 10-04-2009 at 12:36 AM.
I'm still chasing a cover for that trailer I bought. I do the servers for TJM and they said they could get one, of course, while the servers work ok it's hard to find time for me Maybe a bit of sabotague backed up with blackmail
(you'll be glad to know my cable count has dropped significantly... 
)
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