Posts Made By: George Blahun

Jeff:
I know there are some who may not understand the significance of your loss, but the most caring and loyal friends I've ever had were dogs. It's obvious you gave her the best life possible and it's important to take some comfort in that. I've never understood why those around us who give us so much pleasure in life are here for so short a time.

Call me a cynic, but I don't believe for a moment the only reason they want to shoot it down is due to the hydrazine. The real reason could be anything else, nuclear device on board, spying illegally, advanced propulsion system etc. Too many objects have come down uncontrollably with dangerous components on board and no one has proposed firing up to three missiles at them.
Of course I'm interested in anyone else's view on this, for or against.
:S

Tinchi:
The people who put that video out have several more bashing the Prius. Over the last 25 years I have owned a BMW, Volkwagen and Subaru before buying my Prius in 2007. My long term average over the last 3500 miles has been 53.5 mpg (as of yesterday morning). While I do not believe the Prius is anything more than a major step towards a rational design in automobiles, it is saving me a great deal of money over my other vehicles. Our other car is a VW Golf (1998) which gets about 33mpg, not bad but still not what the Prius gets and both of those cars are driven in the same way over the same terrain. I could pick driving courses which would enable my car of choice to do better than another vehicle, which is what the guys in the video seem to do.
Small diesel hybrids may in fact be a better choice, but with the difference in current diesel prices here versus 87 octane gas, the cost of driving the BMW and the Prius in the demo video changes the finish positions.
Anyhow, no flame here from me, just a different point of view.

Linton:
Hello. I am far from an expert at cutting meteorites, however, about 10 years ago I had a vast amount of Sikhote Alin and Brahin. I used a thin diamond blade and experienced a definite learning curve. One thing I strongly urge is to use some type of air filter or respirator as well as eye protection. I used water as a coolant and for the Sikhote Alin this was adequate, but for Brahin, the pieces I cut looked good for a few days, but then began to rust. I eventually stopped cutting because I felt that the equipment I was using was not of high enough quality. It's certainly worth a try but I would probably practice on some terrestrial rocks first. I wish I could give you more helpful suggestions, but the most I can really do is urge caution. I believe there are some youtube videos on cutting.

Doug:

I ran into this problem when I bought my Toyota Prius, and Toyota suggested Prius or Priuses. I usually refer to my 8mm binoviewer pair as "my pair of Ethos". The bottom line is, it doesn't really matter what you call them, people without a pair will still look at you in the same annoyed way.

George

My all time favorite, of which I have owned several, is the Collins R-390A. Best sensitivity, best rf immunity and unfortunately the heaviest. If you take out the tube type rectifiers, the current draw is greatly reduced. It looks impressive and you can still get a "project" at a Hamfest for a couple hundred bucks. I keep selling mine because the prices for complete working units is so high. I sold my last one for $1500. If I didn't have so little space here, I'd still have one.

George

Scott:
Hello, Alan gave great advise on how to see it and I too underestimated the elevation. Today is too cloudy here, but I'll be looking for it everyday. I'd like to find what the earliest in the day I can see it is. It was actually easier to find by eye than through the camera.

George

John:
That's a great photo, but very disturbing. While I don't always look to the government for help, I'd like to see more laws in place to prohibit the sale and ownership of certain "pets".

George

Alan, that's an excellent looking scope showing great craftsmanship. What is the story about the mirror? Material, thickness, etc.

George

Peter:
It's hard to beat either the Nagler 13mm you mentioned or the Pentax 14mm XW. I live in SE CT and like you have a lot of light pollution to contend with. But "seeing" conditions have been for me the determining factor in whether I can get nice sharp images of the planets. In fact some of the nicest views I have had of Saturn were through an AP 150 in heavily light polluted skies, but with very good seeing conditions. If you were to drive a few miles down towards Suffolk and head to one of the beaches you would have pretty dark skies. Also, the Celestron you're using is a well respected scope, but if the collimation is off you won't get the images it is capable of. With the seeing conditions we get here I can rarely get more than 150X out of even the highest quality scope. It's just one of the problems in doing astronomy in the great northeast.

George