Anything special about the Payson area, or are you just using it as an example?
I know Payson is around 5000 ft elevation.
Rob
-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Robert Ayers
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2018 6:58 PM
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Club-Owned Observing Sites
GoogleMaps tells me that Payson is an hour and a half from Sky Harbor Airport.
Call it two hours to the remote site, depending on where you live.
I conducted an informal poll of San Jose area amateurs of the form
If the site was one
​ ​
hour away how often would you visit?
​
If the site was two hours away how often would you visit?
If the site was three hours away how often would you visit? ​ (I also asked
a bunch of other questions like required amenities, how much would you
contribute)
At an hour for one-way driving, many people will drive out, observe for awhile,
drive home.
At two-three hours one-way, the drive-time vs observe time ratio looks worse,
so you would like to observe longer. Second, if you drive home after observing,
and you want your observing time to be as much as your driving time, you are
going to get home real late ... and wisdom might suggest "crash at site rather
than on highway".
So I would suggest that a key early decision is whether you expect most/all
observers to, say, observe from dark to midnight and then drive home, or expect
them to drive further and observe all night and crash and drive home the next
day. This trade-off affects lots of things: you likely usage, needs for
shelter and beds, whether you are appealing to a 'hard core" of "want super
dark" vs families.
Bob Ayers
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