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Observing Report 30th January 2023 (ISS Lunar Transit)

Posted by BG! on January 31st 2023 in My vids, Observing Reports, Video (YouTube, Vimeo etc.)

https://transit-finder.com/ flagged this transit a few days ago. I wasn't too confident that it would happen, as the ISS sometimes gets boosted or gets redirected at short notice to avoid space debris, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.

Everything turned out well - the ISS was there as predicted, and the weather-gods were on my side. The ZWO ASI174MC camera on the 80mm refractor scope captured 27s of full-frame (1936 x 1216 px) raw .avi data at 160 FPS. I reprocessed it 30fps and then hacked out this 10s clip which covers a mere 1.7843s of real-time. It's best viewed in full-screen at 1080p:

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Cutting-edge technology

Posted by BG! on January 4th 2023 in In the garden, Making stuff

Tags: Foraging, I'm a lumberjack...

We had to expand our range of wood-processing tools...

The reciprocating saw and the chainsaw, both Aldi/Ferrex products, are excellent bits of kit. I didn't need to buy any 20/40V batteries or a charger for them, as I already had those for other bits of Aldi/Ferrex equipment.

The reciprocating saw came with a general-purpose blade which will get used for other tasks, but for pruning and timber-cutting I'm using SabreCut SCRS644D and SCRS1531L blades.

For some strange reason the chainsaw was supplied with a 1.3mm gauge chain (91PJ045X) that was tight in the bar, so it was running hot and slow. I replaced that with an Oregon 90PX045E (1.1mm gauge) for a tenner and now it's cutting like a charm.

The Titan Pro Raptor Kindling Wedge was a speculative purchase, bought on eBay during the pre-Christmas sales, and it is proving to be brilliant. So far it's dealt with everything that we've tried to split, from 1" poles to 10" rounds, and it's much safer than a traditional hand-wielded splitting-wedge.

The rest of the tools were already in the stash, so no outlay there.

Going equipped...

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Resolute

Posted by BG! on January 1st 2023 in Great Escapes, Lakes Escapes, New tricks for an old dog, Rambling on...

Tags: Tattoo, The Nab, Wainwrights

Happy New Year, folks!

Only two resolutions for 2023:

1: Tick off that final Wainwright - The Nab. Three times I've had the opportunity, and three times I've not taken it. This nonsense has to stop, so to that end we've booked a week away, based in Hartsop.

2: Get a tattoo. I was all set to get one, then AML foiled the plan, the haemos saying that it was too risky. When that risk subsided, Covid took its place. Right now I don't care too much for any current risk, so I figure that I'd rather have the local tattoo-artist stick needles in me rather than let the NHS have all of the fun.