masterdrago

As Don and others have mentioned, make sure to explore the area near Talkeetna. The images below were taken near there. If the weather allows, the road from Cantwell (Denali Highway) over to the Richardson Highway has good views of Denali and the Alaska Range after it crosses the Susitna River.

Expect Mosquitoes big time in mid August! Bring you favorite repellent.

On 2/4/2021 at 4:02 PM, diesel1973 said:

Have done some ferry trips in the past .1 out of Whittier to  Cordova r/t  and 1 from Homer to Kodiak r/t on the Vomit Comet. 16' seas on way to Kodiak causing some passengers heading to Dutch Harbor to turn around at Kodiak. Trip to Cordova was a whistle stop trip so we stopped at Chenega  to allow a resident to bring needed  supplies home( pick-up truck full of Miller Lite) She was met wih a crowd hugging and kissing her. Very interesting trips. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Supplies are important to a lot of folks in Alaska. I noticed the beer on a trip to Denali base camp in May of 2019.

13 hours ago, donaldsc said:

 

For aurora, Fairbanks in February or March.

 

DON

Agree completely... Fairbanks this morning... https://spaceweathergallery.com/full_image.php?image_name=Ayumi-Bakken-3H5A0955a_1615035379.jpg

It needs to be dark and unfortunately during the longest dark hours in Fairbanks (December), the weather is mostly cloudy. Advice to go in March is supported by many for aurora viewing. If you look at most of the good images of aurora, few are taken in Fairbanks. Most from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greenland & Iceland. We do plan on taking a trip to Fairbanks for aurora because it is the most cost effective way to spend a week trying to view. Another issue is that we are just coming out of solar minimum and the aurora activity is just starting to cycle up. Have had some great activity recently.

Well I grabbed the Sabrent 4bay on sale @ AMZN for $179 and two WD Gold 2Tb drives for $109/per. So for under 400 clams, I've build a more reliable and neater backup equipment deck. And can add more if needed. I also discovered the Sabrent has a much bigger power supply than the YottaMaster (78watts vs 36). 36watts did not feel right running 4 drives. One of my 320Gb spinners was beginning to run hot but not yet showing ill effects and I should get all this new gear set up after Christmas. Thanks for the input.

Spent a good bit of time looking at various reviews of hardware. Can anyone see any reason to not use those WD Gold Enterprise 2GB drives?

Sorting thru various reviews and tests, I've come to the conclusion that the YottaMaster does not get good reviews. So might stick with something like the Sabrent 4 bay that has very good reviews https://www.sabrent.com/product/DS-SC4B/usb-3-2-4-bay-3-5-sata-hard-drive-tray-less-docking-station/

Also seeing that sustained high speed transfers with the SSD style slows when big files are transferred. Plus the large sizes are still up there in price.

Any comments on the Gold WD? It looks to have a slight edge over their Black version which a lot of gamers swear by.

I got an interesting reply from SK hynix yesterday pertaining using 4 of their SK hynix Gold S31 1TB 3D NAND 2.5 inch SATA III Internal SSD drives in an enclosure external to the pc connected via USB 3.0. Similar to:   Yottamaster Aluminum Alloy 5 Bay USB3.0 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure for 3.5 Inch SATA HDD Support 5 x 16TB & UASP,Mac Style Designed for Personal Storage at Home&Office- [PS500U3]. They gave no reason. If I do this, I'll most likely use the Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM). They seem to get cheaper every week.

"We would like to inform you that we don't usually recommend customers to use our product as an external drive purpose. While we recommend you to use it for an internal drive. In addition, we are truly sorry to say but, as we are not a manufacturer of an adapter, we don't have any specific recommendations for the adapter.  

I might consider setting up a case/enclosure like the Yottamaster Aluminum Alloy 5 Bay USB3.0 model with several of the Samsung - 860 EVO 1TB Internal SATA SSD. That would give me the option to run 2-5Tb of space using drives that are 3-4x faster than even the fastest BarraCuda Pro model spinners. Cost would be under $600.

I'm working on a giant photo project now and to make things faster I'm using the 2nd partition of the internal SSD since we are doing a lot of moving, editing and copying. My slowest external drive is the Toshiba 500Mb portable.

Anyone have any input on those WD Easystore external packages? Mostly good reviews.

I use Macrium Reflect Free as my tool for backups but it can be daunting to choose which drive to make the image to. But I've never had to restore so not sure how good it really is. Sometimes it's hard to know when copy/paste is not simpler.

Thanks for the input. Some interesting thoughts. A couple of my externals are now inside their own cases with separate power supplies. All these are being fed from an Anker USB 3 hub. It's just a big cable mess on the desk. I also did not mention an old 320Gb that runs hot (50C) so I usually keep it and the 2Tb WD Wireless Pro unplugged. Found a WD Easystore that might fill the bill.

Not too long ago I improved the performance of my W764Pro desktop by switching to a Samsung EVO 1Tb SSD and increasing RAM to 16Gb. It made a huge difference for little $$. I also invested in a kick butt laptop to edit H-265 video. My dilemma now is the huge kluge of HDDs I'm using for backup and external storage - several used (think old) 500Gb spinners, a 250Gb Toshiba pocket spinner and a 2Tb WD My Passport Pro Wireless which can be taken in the field to backup photos from cards. A wiring nightmare. I would like to use a single external drive but having looked at the plethora of available solutions have become confused. 1st, I want not only space but reliability. Is it absurd to consider a WD Gold spinner? Not even sure they make external flavors. Or just as large an SSD as I can afford? Best ideas....

18-200 or the better optically 28-300 Nikkors. I've heard good stuff about the 18-400 Tamron but read the reviews.

Sony RX 100 series. Just got one a few months back and they are awesome. I even managed to track down an issue I was having with an AR jamming with its 7 seconds of filming at 1000fps. It's sharp, focuses fast and has a 24-200 equivalent collapsible lens. The only thing missing from my model (VI) is a external microphone input.

Agree with Northern Aurora. Spend a few days to give yourself time to experience a clear night to view the aurora. I understand weather can be iffy in September. We're going next December (worst month for clear skies - but lots of dark time for aurora) for two weeks. It's much cheaper than a trip to Iceland or Norway for aurora.

I would fly to Anchorage, rent car from Enterprise, tool around the Kenai a few days, drop the car off (in Anchorage - save $$) and then do a bus (cheaper) or train to Seward. Way cheaper than a one way Anchorage to Seward car rental.

If we were able to do another whale watch, we would definitely use Glacier Wind Charters in Icy Strait again. Great team and family run small boat tours. I think they have a new boat that can hold 13. And a 6 passenger boat.

Totally agree "isn't obsolete until it won't do what I want it to do". I recall when a 24MB file from Lowell.edu took 20 minutes to fetch. Now the same file is ~200MB and only takes a few seconds. It can still be about raw processor power. It took near 30 minutes to import the orbital elements of 3500+ comets and using todays elements evolve all of them to the positions they were in 1977 using the gravitational influence of all the planets, moons and major asteroids as gravitational perturbers. My main desktop pc is still running W7Pro64 with 16GB RAM with an Intel core i5 and a 2gig Quadro K620 video card. Still works for me, although I did upgrade to a W10 laptop w32GB RAM - top of the line at the time - to edit H265 video files.

And cameras.... not long ago picked up a Sony RX100VI. Wishing now I had waited for the VII

How far down the highway from Cantwell can one go when it gets closed in October? Thinking of visiting in December and want to get into Bortle Class 1 skies if it is clear and there are aurora alerts.

On 6/25/2020 at 2:57 PM, cat shepard said:

 

If I might sneak in to someone else’s thread...

 

Do you recommend bear spray, if some hikes some of the trails near the visitor’s center of the NP?

Not needed. If you must, it can be had at Denali Mountain Works near the entrance to the park.

We used Alaska Pursuit Collections for our Talkeetna Alaska Lodge, Alyeska and Windsong booking last year. They did a phenomenal job working with DW and getting us all we wanted. Kept us informed of things that changed in a very timely manner.

When we did Misty Fjords with Island Wings, we had spectacular weather in mid May except that the flyover of Soule Glacier which was cancelled due to clouds over it. We also had spectacular weather on Denali with the glacier landing at base camp with Talkeetna Air Taxi. We had the 10am flight and by noon the mountain was beginning to get obscured by clouds. So the luck of the draw sounds about right. Our several days in Denali gave us the best and outstanding views prior to mid to late day. I don't know what the stats are but that was our experience. Weather could not have been better when we were in the air both days just b4 noon.

As to mosquitoes, We've been in mid May and late August. On land portions had none in May but nearly carried away in late August in the Kenai peninsula. Never had any issues on board ship.

Aurora in Alaska depends on where and when. For instance Whittier on Sept 7th gets nearly 5 hours of dark time between 11:27pm and 4:13am. It also receives another 2+ hours of astronomical twilight which is pretty danged dark. Be aware that city lights or ship lights may make it difficult to view aurora. Also if your taking a train or drive up north to Fairbanks, you'll be in a better latitude to get aurora but have less true dark time - 2hr 29min from 12:34am to 3:03am. One other thing to consider is that we are still near the bottom of the solar cycle but are turning back up, so activity might be sketchy. There are plenty of resources to get aurora alerts on your phone. I use a resource to determine when the dark time is at https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@5878018

We were on a starboard side balcony for our Seward to Vancouver cruise. I know that it is most likely not written in stone but all but one of our port stops had us facing the dock. Not what I wanted. And I expect that the decision may not be made until the ship is near port. I took a look at some of the services that give the positions of the cruise ships and it appears to be a real crap shoot on how they are positioned in port. We clearly wanted to watch for sea life while on our balcony when in port on the ship. Just didn't happen. Not even sure it is even possible to determine which cruise parks which way. Next cruise for us, getting a stern cabin or will skip the cruise. The best exterior scenery we had was after leaving Hubbard Glacier on way to Juneau looking east from the port side upper deck. Of course the trip in and out of Yakutat and Disenchantment Bay was amazing from anywhere on the boat.