NavList:

I got the monocular set up in good time.  The forecast was poor, but the Sun did pop though occasionally.  I got a nice picture projected on the bedroom wall of the trees the Sun was behind, but that was before the transit.  By the time the Sun was clear of the trees and the transit had started, there was a layer of fine cloud again, so all I got was bits of cloud going across the picture.  It had to be a ghost I’d found; it was so far from the true line of the monocular, but at least it fell on a shaded part of the wall.

I also tried the 2.5x star telescope looking direct though the horizon glass of the Hughes Mate’s Three Circle to see if it was worth getting a Hughes Periscopic or a Kollsman out, but it would have been a waste of time.  Then I focussed up the 5x inverting telescope on some distant rooftops, eventually got used to up being down and left being right and put it in the Mate’s Three Circle. The Sun filled a worthwhile part of the view, but initially all I cold see was cloud blowing across (amazingly quickly of course, I suppose 5x normal speed).  Occasionally the cloud thinned enough to see the Sun proper, but it would have taken a lot of imagination to persuade myself that I could see Mercury through 78 years’ worth of muck inside the telescope.  Also, all three horizon filters together weren’t really enough, and I didn’t want to take one from the index set or view though the two mirrors, so I didn’t watch for long.  I couldn’t have anyway, because it soon clouded over again.  DaveP