1st Meet of the Herts, Berks and Bucks

[Adrian Condon]

Hi,

We had our first meeting at the Elephant & Castle, Wheathampstead last Thursday

25th April 2013.

Four people attended, with apologies from two others.

The attendees were:

Jason, Stacey, Reg and Adrian.

The topics covered were:

a) Observing sessions, we are planning to come up with a list of possible sites.

We think we need two reasonably dark sites, with car parking for up to 6 cars

We have started a list of people interested in joint observing sessions.

For security and data protection reasons the list will only be available to

attendees. It will not be published on the SGL website.

c) We discussed Star Parties, SGL at Hereford, Galloway (really dark skies)

Cumbria small and friendly. Plus the possibility of having a local star party

d) Also, discussed was DAG, Dacorum Adventure Group, which offers monthly

trips to north Wales, Lake District etc which offer a change to use your

Astro gear in areas of reasonable dark skies. The cost of most trips are

£25 for two nights accommodation, breakfast, evening meal, pack lunches.

e) We are planning another meet, we trust that others in our area can make it.

f) We discussed local Astromonical Clubs, the advantages and disadvantages,

facilities that they offer and their alleged reputations.

The meeting was very enjoyable, definitely worth having, as it helps to know the

people on the forum.

The meeting ended at 22:00.

Cheers

Adrian

[Monty]

Wish I could've been there but ill health has been spoiling my plans.

[simmo70]

Just found this and will try to attend the next meeting.

I know of a darkish site over Iving hoe beacon way that my ramblers group use but its way out in the sticks so feel exsposed when on my own.

The SWHAS ( south west herts astro group ) is not a bad group and have 2 observatory's one with a darkish site outside Hemel. Only down side it's only open Saturdays and not open till very late as i know the younger people like myself would normally stay later then 11pm.