New World Datsuns...

Well I redid that broccoli watering system, I was looking at that last photo in my last post and I was wondering what that white was on top of the shed, I went out and looked and it was the rest of the watering system for my lettuce last year that is going to be for the broccoli this year that I had not found yet, here is the broccoli watering system redone.



And here is the corn system, but I think I am going to re-do it also using PVC, that black polyethylene tubing does not want to un-bend, I am using small aluminum tubing duct taped to it trying to straighten it out.



Maybe the corn system will work better once the heat gets to it, I have lots of time yet, I am debating on if I should plant more corn, I planted around 40 seeds, that will likely be 80 corn cobs, I can only eat so much corn, but I have not had a lot of luck with corn germinating, last year I easily planted 200 seeds and only had 10/15 plants that came up not counting the late crop that got destroyed during that wind storm.

I made a watering system for the peas/carrots, it was already actually made I just used it for them for now, I made it kinda lean over the row as not to disturb any seeds already planted, I used tees and short pieces of pipe for legs and slid the 1" into the tees, I still have a couple hundred PVC fittings of various sizes but I am running out of pipe.

Looks better every year.

I did nothing but work in the garden today, first I put a row of corn between the grapes and rows of Strawberries from the wall to the Blueberries, the wet spots on the ground are where the seeds are being watered as I turned the water on and then planted the corn seeds in the wet spots.




This is the Cherry bush, last year I think I got to eat 3 cherries, this year it really bloomed.


I was bored so I made these watering squares, right now it has 2 bell pepper plants and a Romaine Lettuce plant, I used every extra piece of 1/2" pipe I had on the property making this.


And this is what I came up with to water my head lettuce plants of which one has died so far, I put a "Y" at the feed and put two water timers, one for the Tomatoes and the other for the lettuce, I am happy how it turned out, I also replaced the black polyethylene pipe watering the corn rows with PVC pipe, I am happy I did that.






I put wire mesh over the lettuce plants to keep the cats away from them while they are small, I have to do the same thing for the Watermelon plants as the cats like to mess with them when they are freshly planted.

I worked 3/4s of the day in the garden, I made this gang outlet out of extra pieces of pipe/fittings, I had just enough fittings/parts to do this, it took a while to find everything I needed but now all the places that need water have it, but I do need a hose for the peas/carrots as I needed both them short hoses to complete the watermelon/cucumber watering circuit.


Here is what the rings look like I made, I made 5 of them.


And here is one of the cucumber plants with the ring installed.


I am waiting until the watermelon starts are larger, I want to see if it is going to get cold next week, if it decides to get cool(frost), I will need to put something together to keep the plants out there alive, the watermelons come inside at night right now.

Definitely work you’re putting in , well done wayno

Things were finally starting to grow and it got cold again, I have eaten maybe 20 strawberries so far, lots of blueberries in my future, my dwarf Cherry bush has a massive amount of Cherries growing on it, the corn finally started coming out of the ground and I put slug/snail bait out and stopped losing corn starts but I found no dead snails/slugs, the one Romaine lettuce plant I bought as a plant is growing like crazy, but all the other lettuce plants I started with seeds survived, hopefully they will take off one at a time so the crop is spread out and I will start some more in a few more weeks, everything is growing fast except the Watermelon plants, they seem to be stalled but don't look dead, they are just growing really slow, the Cucumber plants are growing fairly slow also, I have around 5 pumpkin plant starts(volunteers), I really don't need pumpkin plants but I have decided to let them grow as long as they do not shadow the Watermelon plants, I will force them to grow among the cucumber plants, there is no point it posting photos yet.

It got cold and my garden has stalled except for the strawberries and lettuce, it better warm up soon or my garden might drowned.

I recently bought another telescope, it is a Tele Vue NP101, I bought it because it is just about the best 4" refractor ever made, the issue is I only bought the scope, it only came with the clam shell mount ring and the case it was sold with new, I also bought the diagonal the guy had, I bought a mount for it a week ago, and I bought this small tripod today so i could at least try it out, but that tripod is too small and the telescope can easily get tipped over unless I strap it to the ground, I am looking into a more proper tripod right now.

So I did some garden stuff today, I started 2 new rows of strawberries after removing the old rows(left and right rows), and the middle row is a fixer upper, it had some dead plants so i removed them and put new ones in.



Other than this I have been weeding and looking thru my telescope till 1am to 2am the last week when it was good, 2 days ago I found several new things to me, Swan Nebula and Lagoon Nebula along with 4 Globular Clusters(don't know their names yet) and several Open Clusters(ditto), tonight is supposed to be good so I will be out there again till 1am/2am.

I made a thing recently, there are these devices called a GSO Coma Corrector($90.00) and a Tele Vue Paracorr type 2(I paid $420.00 which is $1.00 over cost for the dealer), the GSO CC is alright except it has to be set up(no directions but it needs to be spaced at 78mm) and it is kinda a strange way to use it, one has to set it up with a 35mm eyepiece(bring it into focus and then lock it), then if you put a 14mm eyepiece in it you have to pull the eyepiece out of it till it comes into focus and view that way, the Paracorr has a twisting top that you turn till the eyepiece comes into focus after set up with the 35mm eyepiece, well my expensive 35mm eyepiece has a step barrel that keeps it from falling out, and it makes it hard to get it out, the GSO CC does not have this issue, so I went thru a couple weeks of testing and made the GSO CC work with a focuser on the end of it, it works great, I shared how I made it but I guess no one wants to hassle with making something like this and just views without it, what it does is it makes all the stars in the eyepiece look like stars in the whole field of view, normally the stars on the edge are ugly weird shapes, I made the cheap GSO CC work as good as the expensive one and it is easy to use once set up correctly.







I am getting close to heading to a dark sight where I can see way more than I can see in my backyard, tonight would have been the night except I have work tomorrow, so it will have to wait for a better night, my plan is to go to the Johnson Ridge Observatory lower parking lot, others go there also but I would like to be there by myself so I can use a flashlight if I have to, if there are too many people there I will back track to the old hanggliding launch/expert landing zone just off that hiway on a curve, except for any cars going by I should be by myself there as it is over grown, but people can see my truck and get curious, not sure yet.

So I have cherries on my "Carmine Jewel Cherry Bush", but they don't really taste that good, the label says good for canning, baking, fresh eating, drying, wine or juice, I seen fresh eating and bought it, it took 3 or 4 years to get any real fruit and I am kinda disappointed.



I also have lots of Raspberries(couple types) and they taste good.





Yum



I have cancelled Centurylink, July 5th is my last day, I have looked at Ziply and Xfinity packages for not much money, one says I can download 50mbps(Xfinity) and the other 30mbps, i am wondering if this is good for what I use the internet for, I go to the forums I belong to and download photos like above, I search Craigslist, I search how to spell a word or what drill bit size I need for a tap, I mostly just read and post to forums, I really don't know what I need, but I am sure there is something cheap out there that will work for me.

Last night I went to the Johnson Ridge Observatory lower view point parking lot, it is considered a dark site, I found things I have been unable to see from my back yard and they were not awesome views but I did find them, after the Moon came up things were not so good, the Moon was so bright it cast shadows, I am not talking about a faint shadow either, it was like the sun was out, I did not even need a flashlight to break everything down at 2am as that is when I called it a night as the sky was no better than my backyard by then.

I did see stuff before the Moon came up I have never been able to see before(mostly galaxies), I have never been able to see M66, M67 and I found them, and I believe I found M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) but it was nothing more than some blurry looking stars, the Dumbbell Nebula actually looked sorta like its name, M81 and M82 were more than just faint smudges, they had shape but were still smudges/foggy looking things.

I mostly went up there to check things out and look above the teapot which my house and trees block for the most part at this time, well when the Moon came up guess where it ended up, yep right above the Teapot, I was by myself most the night and all my viewing night, no one bothering me which did not bother me, when I left I drove up to the upper parking lot and could see no one there either, they were likely smarter than me and knew the Moon would mess everything up, but this was my first time away from my house so I learned a lot, like bug spray is worth looking into, I killed a few Mosquito at dusk, but after it got dark it was not so bad.

One thing I learned was my 521 kingcab turbodiesel does not like the climb to 4000 feet above sea level, no matter what gear I was in it just did not want to run below 1200 degrees(EGT's), so I need to plan for that in the future and either drive something else or drive even slower, I am sure it did not help that it was over 90 degrees most the trip up, but at 3am going up hill in certain places it did the same thing and it was below 70 degrees, once on level ground it drove normally again, I finally got home at 5am and by 9:30am it was too hot to sleep.





Well it was 108 degrees today and it is still 107 right now as I am writing this post(6:20pm), I stayed inside most the day, I put a sprinkler on my roof about 3pm to try to cool things off in the house, they are calling for 112 degrees tomorrow, sounds like a good time to set up a lawn chair right beside the sprinkler.

I checked my blood pressure as I don't do good in heat anymore, with less than 4 hours sleep(it took a while to fall asleep) it was 107/68, I start feeling bad when it goes under 100, I hope I can sleep tonight.

Stay cool

Well either tonight or tomorrow night my internet access ends, I went to the Xfinity place and I refused to have automatic payments so I did not get anything form them, I am going to look into something to see if I can somehow access my email account other wise I will do without for a while.

I have limited internet now.

All I have been doing is working on the U320 lately, put the Xmas lights up but have not tried to take and load any photos into this laptop I bought, I will get around to trying photos some day.

Hope everyone is well.

Glad to hear you’re doing good sir. Good luck with the new laptop.

Yea, Glad to see you around again.

Glad to see you back in the fold !

You’re the person I want to pick a brain on concerning telescopes

What do you want to know about telescopes Blue?

I don't know everything, I only know what I have learned from the mistakes I have made, the telescope I made from scratch is the best scope I own.

Seriously , I was/am impressed you made your own.

We’re trying to move into the clearer “country” skies. I would love to just have a best bang for the buck telescope to look at the stars/moon.

I’d love to occasionally break out a bbq/beer/gander at the stars on occasion. I figure you’d be the person to point me in the right direction since I have little experience !

If price were no object , I’d imagine I’d spend a decent amount on a nice telescope .

Thanks wayno !

That is a hard one to answer so I will go about it this way, I have bought 8 telescopes since Sept. 2020, I sold the first 4 including the 10" Apertura, I still have the classic 6"(early 70s) that I never use, and the others I still have are the 12" Zhummel, the 14.5" Starsplitter and the 16" I made(bought the mirrors), the 12", and 14.5" would work for me but I like the 16 as what I am looking at thru the eyepiece is larger than the them 2 shorter focal length scopes, I want the object I am looking at to be as large as possible so I can see details, I can use the 12"/14.5" but have to use more powerful eyepieces to get the same view and that has issues.
I also bought that Tele Vue NP101 Refractor(slightly over $3000.00 with everything), if I had known what I know now I would not have bought it, it is a good one for looking at the Milkyway in general but it is not a good one for seeing details on a planet or DSO(deep sky objects), an example is what I can see with a 35mm eyepiece in my 16" reflector takes an 8.8mm eyepiece in that expensive TV NP101 refractor and one cannot always use a 8.8mm eyepiece unless conditions are good.
A good example is I have recently seen Jupiters moons shadows march across the face of the planet, I actually seen 2 moon shadows at the same time last week, I could never have seen them with anything other than the 12", 14.5", or 16" with my eyes, the 16" gave me the best view, I used a 6.7mm eyepiece and it was blurry most the time with moments of clarity, younger people with better eyes can likely see details with less powerful eyepieces, but if they used the eyepiece I use they would even see more detail than I can.
It really depends on what you want to look at, in the end hardcore astronomers get larger and larger reflectors until they get to around 24" and anything over that is a hassle that is a lot of work to transport/set up, what one can see in an $8000.00 reflector would likely cost $100,000 in a refractor.
You get what you pay for, a cheap 6" reflector you will see a very small Jupiter/moons with a powerful eyepiece and Saturn will be so small you can barely see anything other than it is Saturn, I have seen white swirls inside the great red dot on Jupiter and I have clearly seen cloud bands on Saturn once so far with my 16" reflector from my backyard.
Do not buy a department store telescope, it is a waste of money.
Ask me specific questions, I looked up telescopes on the telescope rating matrix, I would use nothing else as most ratings are bias, they are written by one that has never looked thru a telescope or written by the manufacturers themselves.

By the way, good telescopes come up every once in a while on craigslist, but you need to know what is good, that is where the "telescope rating matrix" helped me, I paid $1900.00 for that 14.5" Starsplitter with no eyepieces(the Nova primary mirror was worth more), I would never have bought it but it was in the "highly recommended" category, it looked like something Fred Flintstone would own, I thought "it is made out of plywood", but it was made by a US manufacturer including the Nova mirror.