meisterdon

I’ve only been to the observatory area of Mauna Loa once, on a bus tour, but there was no opportunity to get inside any of the observatories. I’ve been very interested in stars, the universe and astronomy for fourty years, but the biggest telescope I’ve ever had an opportunity to look through was a poorly ground 7-inch refractor. My own telescope is only a 3-inch reflector … better than nothing but definitely not a Keck! For me it would be just as interesting helping an ‘actual’ astronomer and visiting with him or her as it would be to look at the stars through one of the giant telescopes.

It’s probably an understatement because I’ve been a believer all of my life, but reading the Bible was so worth it for me. Actually, I’ve read it cover to cover twice and much of it many times. It’s something that I intend to do again (cover to cover). It’s full of surprises: for me one of the biggest was the prayer of Jabez (1 Chronicles 4:10), which is a prayer that I use very often, and I believe it is being answered, sometimes in ways I wouldn’t expect or even think of.

There are three types of model steal locomotives I would like to build: 1) a relatively large 1/10th scale railroad locomotive (model of just about any of the really large ones) and use it to ride around a track built on my acreage, 2) a much smaller (1/15th or 1/18th scale) traction steam locomotive like farmers used to use to pull the first 10-bottom plows, and 3) a smaller model (1/20th scale) railroad locomotive. Actually, the model traction steam locomotive is probably the first one I would try to build. The original ‘steam engine’ tractors were very impressive and there is a large museum here with several actual machines to base the model on.