Re: Ideal Vehicle For The Amateur Astronomer?

Tom Polakis wrote:
Shneor wrote (about his Honda Fit):

feet long. It has an enormous amount of space. It's rated at 33/38 mpg,
and do far, I'm averaging about 35 mpg...


For many years I have been hauling either my 20" or my wife's and my
10" scopes to sites well away from Phoenix in my small pickup truck,
which now boasts 160,000 miles on the odometer. To reach moderately
dark sites requires a 100-mile round trip, and to reach our very good
sites requires a round trip of 200 miles. I average two of those
"nearby" trips per month, and one longer drive to the darker site. So
I'm putting nearly 5000 miles on the truck annually for observing
alone! That correlates pretty well to a period in my life when I was
single and owned two vehicles. The truck was used almost exclusively
for observing trips.

How much is this costing me in gasoline alone? The truck averages a
paltry 20 mpg on the highway. With gasoline at $3.30 per gallon (for
now, anyway), that's $800 per year spent on fuel. If I could bring the
efficiency to 35 mpg, as Shneor has, the gasoline expense becomes $450.
In addition to saving $30 per month on fuel, there's the feel-good
aspect of being slightly less consumptive people. Maybe it's time to
consider a new scopin' vehicle.

My '99 2WD Toyota Tacoma extended cab gets 25-26 mpg in the city with the A/C running, and 29-30 MPG on the highway with no A/C on. The bed's long enough (6 feet) to sleep in (have done so on caving trips). While I have a little Celestron 114 GT (OTA and mount fits into a Rubbermaid cooler), the truck could haul a fair size Dob or an SCT if I ever decide to get into bigger scopes.

--
Pat O'Connell
[note munged EMail address]
Take nothing but pictures, Leave nothing but footprints,
Kill nothing but vandals...
.

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