Hi all--
We are looking for a volunteer to lead the Instrumentation and Equipment Section. The duties include monitoring the I&E Forum, attending a monthly 60- to 90-minute section leaders meeting, ideally hosting a biweekly or monthly Zoom session for the section, and participating in section roundtable discussions at the Annual Meeting. As your AAVSO Vice-President, I've taken on additional committee assignments, among them heading the Director Search Committee to identify a replacement for Stella Kafka, and participating on several ad hoc teams, making it hard to carve out time for the Zoom meetings. I will continue to follow the Forum as I can do that in downtime instead of mid-week mid-day times and Saturdays.
For those who know that I lost my home, shop, and what the insurance company valued as $95k in astronomy gear in the September 8, 2020 Beachie Creek wildfire, my wife and I have settled in a decent little house in suburban Dallas, Oregon. It's not a great sky, but there's only one big tree. I've been experimenting with a Unistellar eVscope (it escaped the fire) for imaging, astrometry, and photometry. My 11" RASA and mount were damaged, but I expect to have them in a new small observatory by summer. With several others, we're gearing up to run an Eddington Experiment Mark II from the mountains of Mexico in 2024.
Richard (BYY)