Article by Malcolm Neal

For my first and possibly only total eclipse I was determined to find a site that had a good chance of clear skies, was moderately civilised and was politically safe!!!  With that in mind in 1998 I started to download from the internet from both the NASA and Fred Espenak's site maps of the path of totality and weather reports for the length of the eclipse path whilst it passed over Europe.  Having done this I compared the percentage clear skies and prevailing weather reports for each area for the time around the eclipse.  This produced several possible countries from which to view the eclipse from Germany through to Romania, though the site further eastwards seemed to be likely to have more reliable weather.
Now came the choice of where to go, travel brochures decided this with resorts that were close to the centre line of the eclipse and not too large.  Romania was a little too far and very few of the resorts were at all close to the path of totality never mind the centre line.  Germany was likely to be cloudy and to a lesser extent so was Austria so it was almost by default that Hungary was chosen and is if fate decided there was a resort that was almost directly on the centre line - so Tihany and Lake Balaton was our choice.  There was just one drawback and that was that the temperatures were likely to be far higher than we think comfortable.  Having booked the holiday then came the preparations.
At Christmas 1998 I purchased a 500mm f8 mirror lens for my SLR camera from several that were available second hand in the Derby photographic shops.  I then made a mylar filter and took a few test shots of the sun.  The image that was produced was a little on the small side.  Back to the photo shop to buy a 2x telephoto extension.  Again some test shots and this time the image was large enough to cover about ¹/₃ the depth of the 35mm frame.  The final lens camera combination being a 1000mm lens working at f16.  I assumed that photographing the sun even at total eclipse the quantity of light would not be too great a problem.  Now to consult the books about taking eclipse photos for advised exposures.  There did not seem to be total agreement here but I memorised the exposure times for the film speed I had decided to use. This was 100 ASA colour film and these suggested exposures from about ¹/₆₀ for the prominences to about 2 to 4 seconds for the outer corona.  I remember this now but when totality occurred it was all guesswork in the elation and confusion of trying to look and take photos.  So much for trying to be prepared!
Early August came and having trundled down to Heathrow the plane took off for Budapest.  Then followed a very hot and sticky bus transfer to Tihany on the Tihany peninsula that juts out into lake Balaton. Another reason for choosing this place was that the eclipse would be in an area of sky that was mainly away from all built up areas and so would not have much artificial light when totality happened.
The hotel was pleasant but a little dowdy being like somewhere in the 60's in Britain. Apart from a holiday we also scouted out the area to look for a good area to view the eclipse.  This seemed to boil down to two places a Bronze age fort on the top of the hill about 2 miles from the hotel and by the lakeside of one of the two small lakes on the peninsula which was about 1 mile from the hotel. On talking to the other English guests in the hotel about 8 of us were going to move away from the hotel whilst the rest about 18 or so were going to watch from the grounds of the hotel.  This was a good idea in some ways but the hotel had small street lamp structures with automatic switches, which would come on in the dark of totality.  Thus the lake was the chosen spot.
August the 11^th dawned or at least I woke up at about 5 o'clock with the excitement!! To find an absolute downpour with total dense cloud cover.  Others said it had also been thundering continuously for a couple of hours before but thankfully I did not hear that.  Having decided then that the eclipse would not be visible I went back to sleep to re-awake at 8 o'clock to find a crystal clear cloudless blue sky.  The gods seemed to be with us.  Breakfast came and went, cameras were loaded, and extra film put in pockets, remote shutter releases found and the tri