"jerry warner" wrote in message
...
Mark I appreciate your post. Looking over optical designs in general
and realisations of those designs, color and contrast always go together
and where crisp color rendition is missing one usually (always?) finds
low contrast coupled with light scatter (the light scattered from any
number

of sources including poor polish on optical surfaces).

Having never had our lx200 apart I cannot confirm an oversized mirror,
but
the
seller told us it was (as a selling point!). I had nothing to do with
buying
this
scope in fact it probably would have been the last scope on Earth I
would
ever have spent (the bucks$$$) the club spent on this 'project'. The
scope
has been "controversial" ( to say the least) since its acquisition.
One thing worth saying, is why not try masking the mirror?. If you cut a
cardboard ring, whose outside diameter matches that of the mirror, make a
hole in this about 1/2" smaller, cover the front face with black felt, and
tape it onto front of th mirror, with the tape only going to the edges of
the primary, it is always removable without any harm, and prevents
reflection from this area.
I'd partially suspect that the 'reason' for this 'feature', was that Meade
had problems producing the primaries without a significant turned down
edge, especially on the larger scopes, and making the primary oversized,
took most of this outside the normally used area. I had the excuse a while
ago, to do a Foucault test on the primary from such a scope, and the outer
1/2", was significantly out of shape.

Mirror flop in this beast is unbelievable. The scope is basically
useless
without
locking the mirror down and even then you never are as sure as you would
like to be about where (relative to axis) the mirror is being locked in
at.
Ive
tried every normal remedy to no avail - others likewise. Nevertheless I
continue to work this scope if only to get to know it - like a client!
It's
pathologies are ubiquitous and a case study, I say with humor!
When you think of the weight of the bit of glass involved, it is not
suprising that there is a significant 'slop', but unfortunately the levels
on some scopes are so bad, that they should never have passed 'QA'. Sad.
:-(

Finally while roaming carbon stars several wekends ago the issue of
color
came up. Our prominent club engineer (Rockwell etc) suggested size alone
accounted for this and I knew he was wrong. I am sharing everything here
at
saa with him and being the great fellow he is (he) is very interested in
all
of the
comments posted here. (John is a great person and a good friend).

So, is it worth tearing what John has dubbed (the *******!) apart to
flock
and this and that ... when there are a million other things we both
would
rather
being doing. I think I will defer this to next year unless I get the
urge to
pull
the corrector and "flock away".... some rainy evening.

Thanks Mark, and all.
Jerry Warner
In the past, on the LX200-12, which I then had, I had cause to take the
scope apart for other reasons, and did 'flock' it at the same time (as
well as adding a mirror lock to the shipping bolt hole). With this done,
and using a very short 'micro' focusser outside the scope to avoid adding
too much length to the optical path, I collimated with the primary
'locked', and imaged/viewed without ever releasing it. The views through
an eyepiece, were noticeably 'better', I think partially because the
locked primary allowed really critical collimation to be achieved, which
had never been possible, given how much the mirror moved before, and the
areas round bright objects, did seem to have slightly less scattered
light, which I felt was possibly from the flocking. However this was of
course 'subjective', rather than an objective test.

Best Wishes