Hi from New Zealand.

[pixelsaurus]

Just thought I should introduce myself before I get carried away. I have a bad habit of joining forums but a bit lax at intros.
I'm Mike and live in NZ with my wife and 8 cats. I have been interested in astronomy for well over 50 years. In fact I remember my father taking me outside one night to watch Sputnik. My wife and I are about to take over public nights for the local society and to that end, I'm building an EQ platform to dump my 300mm f/5 Newtonian on. We have recently purchased a 0.4 ha property and I hope to install a small observatory at some point.
Cheers.

[Howard B]

Welcome to DSF Mike, look forward to your future posts. What kind of EQ platform are you making?

[Dragan]

Welcome to DSF Mike! We hope you enjoy the forum

[Steve Gottlieb]

You'll probably find this forum biased towards northern hemisphere objects, but a number of us travel to the southern hemisphere to observe and enjoy hearing about far southern objects!

[pixelsaurus]

Welcome to DSF Mike, look forward to your future posts. What kind of EQ platform are you making?

Cheers. I'm basing mine on this http://www.reinervogel.net/index_e.html?/Plattform/Plattform_e.html

I did start on it over a year ago but we were renting at the time and had to move. The place we moved to had no storage or space to work so everything was put on the back burner. We have now bought and it has taken over 6 weeks to find everything. Just a few more tools to sort out then I'm back in the game.

[pixelsaurus]

You'll probably find this forum biased towards northern hemisphere objects, but a number of us travel to the southern hemisphere to observe and enjoy hearing about far southern objects!

Cheers. You will find me unashameably biased to southern objects. I lived in Las Vegas for a year and half and I did miss the Mag Clouds,Crux and Canopus. Besides everything up north is just so wrong. Everyone knows that M42 forms the handle of the Iron Pot. :D

Next time you head down, try out our new dark sky site.
http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/travel/shooting-the-stars-in-new-zealands-aoraki-mackenzie-dark-sky-reserve

[pixelsaurus]

Welcome to DSF Mike! We hope you enjoy the forum

Thanks for that.

[Howard B]

I heard about Orion's Iron Pot years ago, and even from way up north I see it every time! Upside down, of course.