Fieldview. January 2004. Location position 52:52:02 North and -0:50:37 East

Fieldview is one of those rare places where the owners satisfy the cravings of us Amateur Astronomers and provide an open house. What is even better is that the owners are Astronomers in their own rite and have their own Astronomy business. Located in East Barsham, near to the North Norfolk coastline.

There are many local activities available including an active birding interest where the local pub has a list of current sightings marked up on a board. Another place to stay. (Exceptional food as well).

This is a first class venue now with star ratings, with B&B but dinner can be arranged if there were enough people making up a group. Even to having it's own observatory, a number of small to large Dobsonians, and the internal lighting switched to red during the night to preserve the astronomer's night vision.

Suffice it to say, that this place is well known in amateur astronomy circles, therefore all new moon periods are always taken, requiring long advance bookings.

Our long weekend had three glorious nights, with the few ardent observers staying out till dawn, (Martin and Andrew). I did on one night which paid dividends to observe the summer constellations at 06.00Hrs, the air was still and crisp, viewing was spectacular. The daytime was marred with cloud cover and rain, so little solar work was carried out, but enough time to compare a SolarScope 60 with the venue's own Venturscopes solar scope. I came away with a desire for a Televue zoom eyepiece, they came away with 'no change'.

A drawback is the southern horizon which has to be viewed over the house if one uses the garden to set up. But I have a cunning plan in that I set up my Kendrick tent in their adjoining orchard, no such problems from there. But you have to make friends with this wonderful dog, who only wants to play. And is typical of all dogs, has so much energy it wears you out very quickly.

Andrew had his 7" Intes-Micro, Martin had his Takahashi Mewlon, Charles had his new Dob, Mike had some new fangled piece of Meade kit and me with my LX200. So a good range of equipment to observe through. We rotated throughout the nights looking through the scopes and comparing notes of our own equipment. The Mewlon and the Micro definitely had the edge for planetary observing, while the Meade's and Charles' Dob created the wow factor for widefield.

All in all, a good weekend, but the weather took a change on the Tuesday. Only the tent to pack, then horizontal winds complete with an ice storm. The worse think ever is packing a wet tent!!

Pics to be added later.

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