Comments and anecdotes about the event:
We had about 10 visitors for the telescope 101/repair workshop and about 40-50 people for the star party. People brought various scopes rescued from garages and closets, to seek help, plus many other visitors. It was quite an assortment from a vintage 80's Celestron C90-Astro, GOTO refractors, Newtonians, and Dobs. Big thanks to the usual volunteers and a shout out to Bill who supplied missing pieces! The clouds parted enough to see Venus, Saturn's rings, Jupiter's bands, and Mars' ice cap, plus the Orion Nebula, through some tough conditions. I lost count but we had one of our bigger Quail Hollow crowds last night. Lessons learned / relearned: 1) Ignore the weather forecast and just show up if it's not raining 2) We need even more volunteers next time; we didn't really promote this heavily but as we suspected, there are a bunch of underused scopes out there 3)People really liked our LED name badges; we should wear them if we have them 4)We should do this again perhaps in the summer; we were able to help a bunch of folks 5)Remember that even red lights can be too bright; I'm sure I blinded more than one person with my headlamp. Apply tape over LEDs if necessary, or use hand-held lights. 6)Bring short step ladders to public events; not everyone is 6' tall. Bill has a particularly nice one, it's light and has a hand rail that's quite high, so people don't have to grab your scope to steady themselves. Perhaps the club can buy a couple ladders for people who regularly do public events.