Mr H in Yorkshire

When I moved here 35 years ago, the estate on the entry road from the A59 was in progress, and its satellite are still growing I see. It is the epitome of dull cloned boxes, and yet some developments can manage a better standard of architecture so it can be done. When first here, I could see the milky way when I got home from work, and that with a light right outside the house. Now everywhere has bright lights, farms dotted across the hills, the school, the memorial Hall, the Health Centre and the biggest culprit is the AONB offices, a body that boasts about the dark skies nearby and the need to protect them! As nobody actually works in the AONB office overnight they are oblivious. Fortunately a half hour drive gets me to the centre of moorland that is as far as is possible distant from any significant town, truly impressive darkness.

From what I have seen of Skipton (son and wife live in Cononley) the dark outskirts are a developers dreamscape. How long will the dark last? We moved to the centre of Pateley and I realised many years ago the potential folly of buying next to an open field on the edge of a town only to see the wonderful view transition into a housing estate, and they seem to be getting bigger all the time.

It's not restricted to burning, there are regular instances of ''bending'' planning restrictions on reuse or sale of barns with changed permissions etc, and a relative of a friend worked for another updale family (who incidentally were convicted of years of fraud by milk watering, initially a serious fine but reduced to a few hundred quid on appeal, possibly the appeal judges were fellow farmer owners?) - he quit because he was required to shift stone walling for sale, quite illegal in the AONB. So much for the guardians of the countryside, the Farmer's propaganda is effective, but CJD, foot and mouth, swine diseases and numerous other issues, including thieving from the heritage environment are outrageous. That said I do know at least one honest farming family, he says quite candidly if you get organised you can get rich legitimately!

I have met Ramsden on a number of occasions, he's a charming fellow but when there's money to be made...

@8324689 Don't be discouraged from a timber structure so quickly. Listen to Rusted's advice and use his design or very similar, it's the epitome of using structure to stiffen the overall construction even though the material is inherently flexible. Look on it as an opportunity to develop a new skill in woodworking, you don't even need to cut fancy joints, just flat overlaps of the bracing on the inside of the uprights, and plywood sheet on the outer faces. Use timber connectors* and bolts or screws if you are not concerned about re/moving it some time. *Like washers but with sharp teeth that dig into the wood. You can do it all with hand tools, especially battery powered ones. More complicated is a dome but you even dispense with that altogether and just use a simple box shape with a fold over roof. You would be very proud if you manage it, I know I would.

@Swoop1 Completely agree, woodwork has be more manageable than concrete. @8324689 Your issue is not material, it's structure. As long as you make braced triangles wherever possible, even wooden poles would do - but note the plural.

Fedex brought me a second hand car seat! Yes it's for astronomy, a major component of my current project, a trailer-based binochair for my very own Large Binocular Telescope. I possess all the optics for 6" f/5 binoscope but I'm working on the easy bits first, I have the trailer and the alt az drives are coming along nicely, so some metal work next for the alt az frame in which it will all sit. What would we do without ebay.

I'm not surprised about the weight, my pair of Jaegers achromats weigh just over 4kg, a friend 'smuggled' them over in his ski gear, saved a fortune in duties. For the benefit of HMRC, I made that up. What make are your objectives. Sorry if I keep pushing you for info that you are probably going to post at some time. Bino viewing is definitely the best way to reduce vision defects, I am differently long sighted and astigmatic in each eye, if I look with either eye alone everything is mediocre, but with both eyes something magic happens, what the brain does by way of image enhancement is truly amazing. I'm truly surprised there were no takers for the bino reflector, not even a club. I have drooled over pictures of it myself, but realistically the Yorkshire skies would keep it in the garage.

Wow that's just about every possible phenomenon in one package. Most impressive.

This year the ratio of glass owned to glass used must be pretty bad, and here in Yorkshire the forecast is uniformly grey for another week too. It is frustrating.

There is always this approach. Sorry couldn't resist showing off.

My next rant will be titled 'Bloody thread bandits'.

Recent history teaches us that with most technologies (think Vinyl, Cassettes, CD now streaming and the same in broadcast systems, in the subsequent decade or so's time there will be something radically different, better and possibly cheaper and Starlink will be yesterdays business model. Their satellites will join the graveyard of obsolete space junk and hopefully then just burn up.

In respect of the the original thread, for the uninitiated, here is a heather burn. The smoke tail is about 2 miles long and the air stinks.

I first encountered these in Beverley. I've just read that in Hull the last few working ones have been given listed status but they are the K8 design, large window type, not half as interesting looking but cheaper to maintain.

Isn't it amazing how threads evolve! Yesterday, last post was explaining what a heather burn was, and today wake up to Dr Who's tardis. Anyway, I retract my whinge, the weather is cloudy again for the foreseeable future. I love Yorkshire despite.

When they aren't poisoning raptors, the game keepers set fire to the heather to encourage the growth of new shoots which the game birds feed on. The pollution is vile, but the land owning lord gets money out of it.

It's the first couple of crystal clear nights here in living memory, so the gamekeepers have lit dozens of heather burns. Now I cannot even see clearly across the valley.

Perhaps you could rig up a small neon light such as is found in mains switches as a reference source. Carefully!

Thanks for the explanation, and yes the photos clarify things considerably. The engineering is looking svelte, that's definitely the right word. At a guess what do you reckon the finished weight will be?

Hi Keith, slow to get back to you - busy helping son put up a greenhouse. I did wonder why the pairs of shafts looked like they would slide in the circular housings, now I know. May I ask, if you are able to move the objectives at all, why not one servo each side and do the focus for each eye directly, which is what I had at the back of my mind when I said 'simplifies the design'. I might be selfish and not even provide IPD, I will think about that. I can't quite work out from looking at the pictures, how your IPD adjustment will work. I can see the lower lightpath opening in the circular plate is somewhat slotted, will the objective motion be within that substantial bracket at the objective end? The one thing I can't avoid is provision of collimation to achieve strain free binocular image fusion. I am thinking to have a 'base' (part of the overall housing) on which sit two trays, one with lateral adjustment, the other with vertical adjustment, both hinging from the eyepiece plane. How will you provide collimation between the two light paths? My overall project is make a more substantial version of my motorised binochair, I am particularly pleased with the success of the 4-bar linkage between chair and binos, and mount it all on a small trailer. Here's a picture that shows the general idea.

Seriously impressed and coincidentally planning something similar with a pair of 6" f/5 objectives I got years ago from Surplus Shed but with a double mirror bino arrangement. I thought I'd make mine focus from moving the objectives which (at least in my naive head) slightly simplifies the design. Good luck with completion work.

I suffer from 'loosyitis', if I put down a pencil it's just gone. So I have learned to put back a tool as I use it, something my engineering colleagues from way back did. Ultimately it is quicker than a multitude of tedious searches in the debris for the one tiny thing you want.

Very few astronomical sighting compare with excitement of seeing a bolide. I've witnessed three in about 50 years of interest in the night sky. Each was absolutely magical.

I will butt in here with my method. I didn't proportion the mix, I simply painted the interior surfaces, then while wet put the sawdust in and simply shook/rolled it around to let it adhere. I did this twice. The surfaces of my scope comprise both wood and aluminium and it works equally well on both. My feeling is that if you mix the sawdust then paint with the mixture you will get a preferred orientation to the particles, which may be a good thing. If I look into the interior of the telescope housing, the random orientation bestows an equal darkness in all positions. The particle/paint surface is definitely darker than black paint alone but I can't put figures to it. Also I used blackboard paint which is inherently matte finish. I did consider a scheme using PVA glue first, then sawdust then paint. I'm sure that would work too.