Aurora

[Tom M King]

The sky is crystal clear for the first time since they've been active, but the Moon is still up so the sky is a little bit too light to see the Northern Lights with bare eyes. I've heard it said that you can take pictures with your phone, but that's not quite accurate. You can put your phone on camera and hold it up to the sky and what you see is quite active and spectacular.


A friend of ours was able to use her newer iphone to capture it somewhat by turning the light off, but it's still not quite as good as just looking at the screen.


It should be a lot better about an hour or so after the Moon goes down, but I doubt I will get up that late. We enjoyed what we saw with the aid of the phones though.

The activity goes all the way up to straight overhead.

[Michael Weber]

I’ve always wanted to see the northern lights. We had no luck viewing from our yard in western Arkansas. So Saturday evening we took the sidecar rig up into the Boston Mountains hoping for a better experience. Pulled over in a secluded spot with little light pollution. Headed home two hours later having seen nothing. Oh well.

[Tom M King]

Did you hold your phone up on camera?

[Ron Selzer]

Michael, what is your rig? Favorite one I had was a Watsonian Oxford hanging on a Yamaha XJ1100J. Have had others, stop riding 9 yrs ago. Last was a Vetter Terraplane hanging on a BMW R1100?C??.
Ron

[Warren Lake]

went out after 4:00 am Sat (friday night) sky was full of pulsating patterns. No extreme colour and not super bright but tons of it. Video taped and not looked yet and dont think it will show much. Did adjust the camera to be brighter but dont think that worked. Likely a night setting I dont know about.

[Michael Weber]

Michael, what is your rig? Favorite one I had was a Watsonian Oxford hanging on a Yamaha XJ1100J. Have had others, stop riding 9 yrs ago. Last was a Vetter Terraplane hanging on a BMW R1100?C??.
Ron

Ron, sounds like you’ve had some nice rigs. I have a 1998 Honda Valkyrie cruiser with a Champion Escort. It’s my one and only rig. Self mounted the used hack about 10 years ago. That was an interesting and lengthy experience. We’ve enjoyed it ever since. This was our second extended trip.

[Tom M King]

The phones recorded some of it, but nothing like just standing there looking at the screen with the phone set on camera.

[Tom M King]

We had a small group over and not a person understood the importance of protecting their night vision so they could see something. Some walked up with flashlights on, and some were even looking at their phone regular screen while they were there.

[Ron Selzer]

Ron, sounds like you’ve had some nice rigs. I have a 1998 Honda Valkyrie cruiser with a Champion Escort. It’s my one and only rig. Self mounted the used hack about 10 years ago. That was an interesting and lengthy experience. We’ve enjoyed it ever since. This was our second extended trip.

Enjoy it, like the extra fuel tank.
Ron

[Michael Weber]

Enjoy it, like the extra fuel tank.
Ron

lol, with 6 cylinders and 6 carbs, a hot cam, I get low 20’s mpg with the loaded hack. Sometimes less depending. It’s a real necessity in some areas we’ve been and we take two lane highways almost exclusively. I also carry an extra gallon in one of the bags just in case. But like they say, “Nobody buys a Valkyrie to get good gas mileage”.

[Ron Selzer]

I never got out of the 20's with any of my rigs. Tried not to run less than 70mph all the time. Never had a spare tank, came close to empty too many times. 4000 miles front tire, 6000 rear tire. BMW had a custom rim to mount a car tire, didn't keep it long enough to see how long it would last, just didn't like that rig after it was built.
Ron