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Best way to approach this is to not pay too much - try one out, that is.
Optically they can be superb to good, but Ive never seen or heard of
a bad one.
Mechanically I have never seen or heard of one with image shift ....
irrespective
of what those experts who never owned one say from their arm chairs and
toilet seats...
They are NOT in the league of scts. These are f/15 systems. As such they
are not bright. When collimated correctly, and yes you can collimate them,
they provide superb planetary and lunar detail but they would not be
particularly good for stellar work, even doubles work because they simply
are not bright. They do resolve fine doubles with losts of contrast, but you
pay in brightness.
In one respect these aresome of the finest lunar scopes ever designed wth
huge lunar photo potential.
Their curse is the weight behind the mirror which adds greatly to cooldown
time, in addition to the thick mak lens. They just do not cool and equalise
quickly. Solution to this is to get the :"spotter" version which did not have
the
counterweight, but these are hard to find.
Dont even bother comparing them to the f.10 and f/12 6" russian maks etc -
not the same animal by a long stretch. (f/15 vs f/10/f12). These are a scope
of their own kind and nothing else quite like it. They will outperform any
russian 6" mak easily when performing well, but the russian maks are more
of a general scope, a bit more reliable for average routine use and seeing,
and they are heavy (very heavy).
See the original Todd Grossman evaluation of them which was favorable...
Again, buy a good used one first. You will love it or hate it all at the same
time weighting for it to cool! And when it does - wow!
Good luck.
Olga
Ed Majden wrote:
> How good are the Meade 7 inch Maks? Do they compare optically with the
> much more expensive Questars or Russian Mak imports? Do they exhibit the
> same excessive image shift problems of the Schmidt Cass systems?
> Ed
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