So, I made a trip to Calhoun this past Friday night. Given the forecast information available the day before, Friday night was forecast for mostly clear, Saturday and Sunday, partly cloudy. I haven't been out with the scope since my previous trip to Calhoun on December 22nd and with winter quickly coming to a close, I decided to make the trip.
I'll sum up my trip by stating it was a long, hard fought battle for a small victory.
On the drive down I stopped at a rest area about 40 miles north of Marietta to check the forecast. I stop here if I feel the forecast is risky and I may want to turn around and head back home. The visible satellite was showing strong erosion of the cloud deck from the south and west. It was moving at a pretty good pace with the clearing line just entering southern West Virginia at about 3 pm. The NWS was showing clouds significantly decreasing starting about 8 pm. I decided to keep going.
I arrived at the park about 4:30. First, I went into the bunkhouse, my sleeping quarters for the night and turned on the space heater to warm it up. Next I went back out to set up the scope. This was only the second time I have been to Calhoun in the winter and there was snow on the ground. Not a lot, just enough to fill in the low spots in the grass.
Just after 5 pm the scope was set up and cooling down. I kept the area I occupied pretty tight so that when others showed up there would be plenty of room for everyone 
After setting up the scope I went back into the bunkhouse and found the 20 amp circuit breaker had tripped with the space heater set to 1500 watts. I turned the heater down to 1300 watts and did not have anymore problems the rest of the night. The breaker panel is on the wall to the left of the space heater.
By 6 pm the clearing line seemed to stall in a west-east line at about Charleston. At 6:30 I decided to try and take a nap. I don't sleep very well outside of my normal routine and this night was no exception. I checked the weather at 7:15 and saw the clearing line had resumed it's north and east progression though now at a slower pace than earlier in the afternoon. At 8 I tried again to take a nap and may have dozed off briefly. I checked my phone about 9:15 and saw the clearing line had made it's way north of Charleston and the western edge had made it through Ohio. I got up about 9:30, ate dinner and waited. Just before midnight the sky started to break up! It took another half hour to completely clear out.
My observing list for the night was, not surprisingly, focused on winter sky targets. I don't plan on being out at 1 am in mid February to observe objects that are well placed in the evening sky at the beginning of May. But, this is how it worked out so I moved on to plan b: observe spring favorites until I run out of energy! Moonrise wasn't until 3:30 so I had more than enough time.
My list for night included M35, M36, M37, The Eskimo Nebula, M81, M82, Ghost of Jupiter, M51, NGC 4565, M65 and M66. Mars looked pretty good at 330x too. I finished up with M13 just because I could! The seeing was okay and the transparency was pretty good by 1 am. I decided to pack the scope up at 2 am and went to bed at 2:30.
View looking southeast before 8 am.
Andrew
Edited by andreww71, 23 February 2025 - 04:23 PM.