Black Friday

Shopping Black Friday online is the way to go I think. Less crowds and you dont have to deal with other shoppers until you have to pick up the items from the post office. Rest assured you are not the only person thinking that online shopping is the way to go for Black Friday shopping.

It's also kinda nice that the online shops start targetting shoppers a week before that, and sometimes even a week after. I normally dont shop too much on Black Friday but this year I made it an exception, I needed to pick up a few essential items for 2019 Milkyway/Aurora shooting season.

I went surfing to Fjellesport.no, Adnature.no, Angler.no and the staples at XXL.no I picked up a 60L Osprey backback, down sleeping bag, sleeping bag liners, hiking poles, down jackets, hiking boots as well as several middle layer fleece. I figure by mid Aug 2019 I should be able to lug all these gear up to 900m around Blafjelle or Fidjelland for a full night of Milkyway/Aurora/Nightsky imaging ... single shots with one tripod, one head maybe 2xcamera set-up.

This has been a longtime in the planning, just haven't been executed due to lack of will and interest from others. I'm making it a hard target for 2019. If the weather cooperates God willing.

Target locations:

1. Blafjellet ... park, trek 2hrs from the trailhead, camp with a view into the Monafossen valley.
2. Fidjeland ... Cabin 48, trek and camp at the 1100m top.
3. Monafossen ... park, trek and camp looking into the Monafossen valley.
4. Fosseknuten ... park, trek and camp with a view north across the water.

There are plenty of other locations too around Lysesheiea  ... the full moon and clouds has always been the blocker. I still need to figure out the best way to lug the Star Adventurer and the carbon tripod for those locations requiring some trekking.

The last Milkyway for the season

I waited from August till now for this season's last shot at the Milkyway. It wouldnt be an exaggeration to say that this was the worst one yet. If it didnt rain, the sky was just full of clouds. There would be a couple of nice days during the week however by nightfall it would again turn cloudy.

Finally on the weekend of the 17th Nov, the sky looks promising. Clear sky but prettty cold by then at 5-5degs C throught the night on average reaching 1 deg C aorund 2am. Not wanting to loose the season I took a cabin for 2 nights and left for Sirdal on Saturday returning on Monday.

These shots were taken during the stay at the cabin, most were taken on the first night. By the 2nd night the temperature went down to minus 2 deg C. I concluded that I had gotten the shots I needed and didnt venture out on the 2nd night.

Some of the images above (1-3) were stitches from several individual images. This outing did proved the mettle of the newly acquired Samyang AF 85/1.4 for my needs ... it's bright, light and at 85mm the star distortions at the images were negligible. Vignetting at the edges was easily removed with software, the purple fringing at 1.4 is only visible at huge magnifications. All in all, I'd bring this lens to my next Milkyway party and next season I'm sure to pair it with the Star Adventurer and Deep Sky Stacker while at it.

This year qualifies for "dismal" as far as Milkyway is concerned. Typically between the months of Aug-Nov you would have been able to make at least 3 outings for that entire duration. However the odds against it are pretty high once you put clouds, rain, and full moon as potential detractors.

Quads Nov 2018

BTFL 3.4.0 Upgrade

Managed to upgrade several older quads with BTFL 3.2.2 on Betaflight F3 flight controller to BTFL 3.4.0/3.4.1 today:

Genius1 BTFL 3.4.0
Genius2 BTFL 3.4.0
Iflight7 BTFL 3.4.0
Dragon220 BTFL 3.4.1
GEPRCONE BTFL 3.4.1
PUDA240 BTFL 3.4.1
REAL250 BTFL 3.4.1
GTR7-300 BTFL 3.4.1
GTM7-300 BTFL 3.4.1


These quads were all on Betaflight F3 flight controller and were easily flashed using the ImmersionRC driver fixer in DFU mode.

Also tried upgrading EX220-2 which was on Betaflight F4 flight controller however that didnt go very well with the ImmersionRC (failed, more than one device detected). Unable to sort it out using Zadig either. I cant remember how the F4 flight controllers were flashed the first time ... a boot pin maybe.

For now the first task is to upgrade all F3 flight controller quads to BTFL 3.4.1, second task is to put these through test flights and the third task is to upgrade those quads on F4 flight controllers.

Now where is that boot pin ...