YellowGMCMotorhome: Kissimmee Prairie weekend

By now you've figured out I like to go to KPSPP. It's quiet, it's dark, and it's pretty darn close to home. This was the third January in a row we have gone. I chose the weekend closest to the new moon, as I was going to give the Celestron 8 another go. I checked the calendar and it was open, so I booked the site for Fri and Sat night. Whoops! turns out it is the weekend our daughter's Robotics Competition. As it was all paid for and you lose the first night on a cancellation, I decided to go by myself anyway.

The coach hadn't been out since early November when we went to Auburndale Speedway for the "Night of Destruction!" No good pics from that trip as it was a quick up and back, but here is a teaser video of some figure 8 school bus racing:

It starts getting interesting around the 2 min mark. Anyway it was fun, but this weekend, I took a half a day off of work and drove the coach to work and parked in my normal spot

I left at noon, hopped right on the turnpike and soon was zipping out the BeeLine Hwy toward Okeechobee. I got there before 1:30 and with some time to kill stopped in at Sirum's GMC to introduce myself and check the place out. I found out Friday afternoon is not a good time for a social call, for while they were all very friendly, they were busy trying to finish up some coaches as people were coming to pick them up. I had a nice chat with Jeff's parents who were visiting too, and the mechanics came out to see my Olds 350 install as they didn't believe it when I told them :). I met a Facebook friend and local Yolanda who was dropping off her coach, and took a quick spin around the shop to see the operation

It was then back in the coach and off to the Prairie. Originally the weather forecast was excellent for star gazing, but I was seeing some high clouds on the way in that made me nervous....

You can see the coach in the bottom shot. This is the Equestrian loop which we like as the spots are larger than the family loop. Only thing is the bath house is half a mile away. It was still pretty early around 3:30, so I slowly started farting around with bringing out the telescope. As I was by myself and planned an evening of star gazing, I didn't unload the firewood, chairs, etc.

You can see here I have the tripod out with the equatorial wedge mounted, the Celestron scope on the picnic table and wagon ready to haul it about 75 yards to the clearing. The scope is period correct for the GMC as my Dad bought it in 1975. It was top of the line at the time and is an amazing piece of equipment. I'm just getting started with it and it takes awhile to set it all up.

Here is the viewing area I have where I set up in before. They do have dedicated astronomy pads, but the RV won't fit on one as they are small and they lack any amenities other than 110V. The horse paddocks are on the left and loop is ahead and to the right.

4:30PM and it's still looking iffy. My phone told me the moon is in this pic, but yeah, not looking too good. I'm at a turning point here. When I checked in, the ranger mentioned a volunteer astronomer on the family loop avail from 6-9PM. Hmm, it's going to be 40 out tonight, I'm alone, the sky is iffy... maybe I'll pedal over to the family loop and see what the volunteer has going on..... I pedal over and sure enough his scope is out and wrapped up. It's bigger than mine so that seals the deal. Someone to talk to, a better telescope, and more knowledge that I may benefit from.... I go back and pack everything away and put it in the coach. It's 5:15 now so I cook up a hot dog on the griddle and get my warm clothes out.

As I'm leaving the neighbor mentions that there is a launch from Cape Canaveral at 7:45 so this sounds pretty good too. I pedal over and meet Alan who is a super nice guy from upstate NY. He is uncovering the scope and we get to chatting. The moon is already setting as it's 2.5 days old, so that's the first thing he zeros in on. It's a waxing crescent and a thin one at that. I like the moon like this as the sun is low and throws long shadows on the surface, so you really get a sense of the topography. I tried to take a picture with my phone and it sorta worked...

After about half an hour, the moon started to dip behind the trees so that was done. Next he looked at the Orion Nebula as it was high enough and not in the clouds. I saw a meteor while he was getting that dialed in. His scope was 100% manual with no clock or anything, which impressed me as he was whipping it around nailing one object after another. I asked him a bunch of questions and he was most gracious, so I have a leg up for the next outing. As 7:30 approached, other campers started to filter over as the launch was still on... One of the ladies had her phone streaming the launch which was nice. About 5 seconds after liftoff, up to the NE we saw the horizon glow orange and then a bright point of light started climbing upwards. We were able to see the Atlas rocket lifting it's defense satellite payload for at least 5 minutes. With the audio, we could easily see the first stage burn out, then the second stage fire as it kept on going up up up. Photo is probably 4 minutes or so into the flight when the arc had already started to flatten. If you zoom in you can see two exhaust flames.

I was VERY surprised what a great launch viewing area the prairie is! I figured it for over 100 miles to the launch pad, but google tells me it's closer to 75-80! The park is a little more north than I imagined...
We looked at other stuff like the Andromeda galaxy, Castor (multi binary system), several star clusters and M81 and M82. The clouds were moving in albeit slowly, leaving overhead clear, but more and more light was reflecting off of the clouds making it brighter than usual. He closed up shop around 8:45 as the clouds were the final curtain for the evening. I had a very chilly pedal back to the coach.

As soon as I came in the coach I heard it. An electrical buzz, like a transformer or fluorescent light ballast. I could tell pretty quick it was coming from the exhaust fan. I was COLD, so I started heating water for hot chocolate and started to investigate. For some reason I decided to grab the exhaust tube in the pic above and turn it (thinking it may stop). It didn't. In fact is SPARKED!!!! Uh Oh.

As you can see the PO was a wire nut fiend and it was connected with them. Easy. I took off the hot lead, and it stilled buzzed. I took off the neutral and bingo it stopped. Now the question is why is my 110 system grounding through my exhaust chimney...a puzzle for another day as I was tired and went to sleep before 11PM.

I slept good, but man it was CHILLY at 5AM when I woke up. I went back to bed until about 7 when a herd of wild turkeys decided to hang out right outside my window. Tried to get a pic but they wandered off before I could get the phone camera to work. I figure the coach is good for about 10 degrees over outside temp, so it was around 50 in the coach. I went back under the covers for another 2 hours (hey, I'm relaxing!) and got up at 9ish.

Ernie was on his way and he called shortly later and was at the site by 9:30. I ate breakfast and they started to put up their tent around 10.

It was obvious that today was going to have alot of cloud cover. By the late afternoon it was completely overcast, but saw a lot of cool clouds.

Last March there was a tornado that came through the park and a walk through one of the hammocks it traversed it was very east to see the path of destruction. About 40-50 feet wide, everything was mowed down. It did flip a few trailers in the family loop, and stayed on the ground for much longer than a typical FL tornado. Here is action Ernie snapping pics of a lovely model.

Long story short, I became a baby sitter for about 3 hours Sat afternoon. Here I am dazzling the kids with the magic of fire. They weren't impressed, but I got a good start on a bed of coals for the meat fest we had after dark. One of the cool things, was the 4 kids decided they liked hanging out in the coach playing cards at the dinette, while us grown ups sat around the fire with cocktails enjoying ourselves without screaming kids. I did have to open the door and throw in a bag of chocolate chips which seemed to buys us more time until the sugar kicked in......