As always it was really cool being here and meeting you all.
This year next to all the regulars i met 5 new cool people: Richie, Nigel, Adrian2 (we already have RGBee adrian and now we have Adrian2 aka Dilbert), Tony and Jaycee !
Really nice chaps that fitted in just nice with us bunch of laserdudez.
Friday morning Soforene and i got to the hall around 9AM, finding Jim sitting in a chair not feeling to well. We set up, and not long after putting up the tables and blinding the windows people start to drop in.
Really cool to see so many lasers brought this year. And so powerful ! The 2/3 watters are more regular than exceptions. Lots of different builds everyone doing it in their own way but all really cool and well built.
During the meet i saw Jim feeling better and better as well (still coughing) but you could see him enjoying as well, which made me feel good. He did a great job organising this, and as always his lovely mum and dad dropped by with the kids and his mum's lovely chocolate cake!
Thanks to Paul (Lasermad) who made me a very good deal on the mugs i was able to provide everyone with a Laserists do it in the Dark mug, thanks Paul for that !
Came in handy for the Stroopwafels i brought for everybody, how's drinking tea from a Laserist mug better be done than with a stroopwafel 
Rob brought out his lovely shoeboxes 2.0, which consisted already of nice 1Watts of green, but is now fitted with 1W of blue as well. The color is ab-so-fuckin-lutely amazing.
It almost looks white, so bright, like a white LED blueish white.
This year also the new guys brought in some stuff, like the ALC 68 and the big Spectra Physics, needed a lot of power and watercooling, but man what a nice equipment.
Jim tapped them in onto the buildings 3 phase power in the switchboard, giving them enought power.
And then, on Friday night we finally got to see Dan's fantastic surprise for us.
Bring out the popcorn and drinks ;-)
Dan brought a 40W Laserscope, and boy did it look gooooood !
Took some time to setup connect all the power and switches and stuff and then there was..... LIGHT! And how... amazingly bright light.... already a few watts of green.
We walked to the park and it looked OK but not yet mindblowing, then someone asked "Is that Q-Switched then ?" and just at that moment Dan flicked the switch to turn on Q-switch mode >>>> WOOOOWWWW !!! the crowd roared and someone said dryly: "Now it is...."
The light went from bright to fuckin' bright in an instant.
People saw it in Boston, which was 10miles away (but if you'd said Boston, USA i would have believed it also!
) Really cool, so we took pictures, and Rob andy and some others went to take pictures from 2 miles distance ! Tonight i talked to the barman in the hotel and they sat outside on the benches and saw the light (that's also around 2 to 3 miles from the hall!).
Absolutely brilliant piece of kit !
Then we went on playing shows all on great music provided by our resident Dj, mr. Skulpture aka Graham, Son of Kevski..... He made a really cool mix, 1 hour and 32 minutes long, flawless, doing it live for our (and his) enjoyment, absolutely really nice music.
I learned some Quickshow tricks this weekend from Rob and Carl B.
Finally Quickshow is stable enough to make timeline show, although i experienced like 4 or 5 issues in the first 15 minutes working with it (reproducable!), fortunately i will be at Pro Light and Sound next weekend, so will talk to Bill about that. Maybe i've earned a Pangolin goodie for finding and submitting new bugs ;-)
Then sunday people started packing up and heading back home. We went on, today was like optics cleaning day, in the morning 3 or 4 people all got their projectors from the truss and used first optics cleaner to clean their dirty optics , i really worked well and showed a huge difference in some cases ! We're talking 100's of mW gains by just cleaning optics and windows!
In the afternoon it got quiet, rob upgraded my Ilda Gem which is one of the first, to the new firmware so it now can display at 12, 18 and 30Khz. Excellent service from a top laser bloke.
If you ever need cool gadgets to assist in your laserhobby visit Rob Stanwax's online shop.
Then it was unfortunately time to clean up the hall, putting away all the tables, clean the dishes and finally shut the door. Dan, Rob and i had a good time back in the Ship.
Not after we had a laugh outside the Surfleet village hall with Andy and Jim.
Man, time flies when you're having fun. But certainly was so worth it.
What i learned from this LEM:
1. Laserists are nice people
2. QS still has bugs but is becoming better and better !
3. 445 blue and 532nm green make up a real cool color, bright as hell and looking very good.
4. A laserscope is a serious piece of equipment , seriously drawing a lot of attention.
5. It's a hell of a drive to get here but seriously worth every second of it !
6. Jim's mum still makes the best chocolate cake
7. Jim did a great job organising this for us !
Hope to see everybody (including the new people we've met) at the next LEM (Showlem 1 in July) or at the next Surfleet LEM (UKLEM 12)
See you all next time, thanks everybody for your presence, humor, nice stuff you gave me, the food you let me try and the knowledge you've shared ;-)
I didn't fail !
I just found out 10,000 ways that didn't work.