Meade LXD55 10"SN report

by Peter Santangeli

I recieved my 10" Meade SN with UHTC coatings today, and thought I'd give a quick report, since these scopes are of some interest.

On arriving, the scope had a major problem in that the secondary was loose in the corrector. 1/2 an hour of building a tool to tighten a lock ring corrected the problem.

The autostar is also flaky. I haven't tracked down the problem, but it is crashing every 10 minutes or so. I'll call Meade on monday.

After spending a small amount of time outside this evening, my impressions are:

The OTA is gigantic. Dwarfs my C11 OTA.
Excellent optics. Quite outstanding really. Plop a 35 Panoptic in to this scope and enjoy quite spectacular vistas. Worth the money for that alone (certainly after subtracting out the money that can be regained by selling the mount).
For me, the mount is a joke. The 10" really is pushing it. I don't believe it's suitable at all for astrophotography. Yes, I'm sure people can and will do it, but people use all sorts of crazy mounts. My (strong) recomendation to anyone with photography in their futures would be to stick with the 6 or 8, or buy a different mount. It's ridiculous that S&T didn't make a stronger statement about this aspect in their revue. I'll be sending them a letter.
I worry a lot about whether this thing will be able to carry a scope of this size after a year or two's worth of wear and tear. It's probably a great mount for a smaller scope though.
The drive is too loud to use in my backyard. If I were a neighbor, I'd be seriously pissed at the noise.

I did buy it strictly for the optics, and on that score it is a perfect 10. I do feel that Meade should be more clear that the 10 is pretty much a visual only scope though.