Is LXD75 Series Shipping Yet ?

does anybody have any confirmation of when is the Meade LXD75 series
shipping ? Any shipments yet ?
Does anybody how this thing is going to have PEC and 3 star alignment using
the Autostar 497 that it is supposed to ship with ?
Does this mount have a guiding port or would guiding be limited to the Meade
LPI serial guiding commands ?

best regards,
Matt Tudor

I've heard everything from "2 weeks" to "6 months." ;-)

Peace,
Rod Mollise

After the problems with the LXD55, I would think the appropriate question would
not be "are they shipping yet?" but rather "are they working yet?"

By the way, has Meade gotten the LXD55 straightened out?

jon

By the way, has Meade gotten the LXD55 straightened out?


Hi Jon:

No, they never quite did. I believe they decided to just scrap the mount
instead of trying to modify it. The major problems were the (extruded aluminum)
tripod and gears that could not be tightened down enough or for long enough to
stop them from slipping. The mount's castings were also weak and prone to
breakage. That said, lots of folks had lots of fun with the scopes. The OTAs
were pretty darned good (I was recently impressed by a view of M51 through a 10
SNT). Let's hope Meade has learned its lesson mount-wise.

Peace,
Rod Mollise
Author of _Choosing and Using a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope_
Like SCTs and MCTs?
Check-out sct-user, the mailing list for CAT fanciers!
Goto http://members.aol.com/RMOLLISE/index.html

Jon Isaacs wrote in message
...
I've heard everything from "2 weeks" to "6 months." ;-)

Peace,
Rod Mollise

After the problems with the LXD55, I would think the appropriate question
would
not be "are they shipping yet?" but rather "are they working yet?"

By the way, has Meade gotten the LXD55 straightened out?

jon


I'd have to respectfully disagree. It doesn't matter if they're working or
not . Experience has shown that from Vixen (with the non working autoguider
port on the Sphinx ) to Microsoft, everybody ships half baked products .
Therefore, my only question was, are they shipping yet ?
Don't get me wrong , I've worked in corporate R&D for over 20 years and I've
seen worse. MEade is no dofferent than any other public company . Sales and
marketing plus the next quarter bottom line are what matters.

best regards,
matt tudor

p.s. probably the lxd75 is Meade's attempt to straighten out the lxd55, make
it cheaper and add a few extra features to charge more . Also don't forget
the all important color change . Sadly, the lxd75 tripod legs showing in
their lxd75 ads look identical to the Meade #884 tripod used for the etx
series . Parts of that tripod are made of plastic . The white leg sockets
(which were black for the #884 but same exact shape ) were plastic and the
steel tube leg ends were glued inside these plastic sockets. After some use
and abuse, especially if one wanted to tighten the spreader bar/accessory
tray to make the tripod more stable, the sockets would start stretching for
lack of a better word and the glued legs would simply fall off . I've had 2
of these tripods and got rid of both . The steel legs are there just because
they look good in magazine ads . I wouldn't place a 20+ lbs scope on such a
contraption even for visual . So to restate my answer, the lxd75 is probably
Meade's attempt to convince the market that they've modified the lxd55 and
not only fixed but improved it. I can picture some marketing directors
getting million $ bonuses because they asked in a management meeting why is
a good mount colored black when eveyrone knows the good guys were
traditionally white .

I'd have to respectfully disagree. It doesn't matter if they're working or
not . Experience has shown that from Vixen (with the non working autoguider
port on the Sphinx ) to Microsoft, everybody ships half baked products .

Therefore, my only question was, are they shipping yet ?

Given Rod's response about scrapping the LXD55, I guess that means you are
willing to take a chance that Meade will get the LXD75 mount working properly
and not abandon it too....

Personally I would not want to take shipment of one until I was pretty darn
sure they were going to get it straightened out and working.

At one point I passed on buying a Super Polaris mount that a friend was selling
because the LXD55 was coming and it seemed like a better choice for about the
same money.

Obviously I was wrong.

Jon

Subject: Is LXD75 Series Shipping Yet ?
From: (Jon Isaacs)
Date: 6/12/04 2:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:


Given Rod's response about scrapping the LXD55, I guess that means you are
willing to take a chance that Meade will get the LXD75 mount working properly
and not abandon it too....

Personally I would not want to take shipment of one until I was pretty darn
sure they were going to get it straightened out and working.

At one point I passed on buying a Super Polaris mount that a friend was
selling
because the LXD55 was coming and it seemed like a better choice for about the
same money.

Obviously I was wrong.

Jon
*************************
The new LDX-75 looks like a nice mid size mount! But time will tell if it's
gonna be worth a darn.

The LXD 650 and 750 mounts were no AP , thats for sure!!!

Chas P.

(CHASLX200) wrote in message ...
[...]
The new LDX-75 looks like a nice mid size mount! But time will tell if it's
gonna be worth a darn.

The LXD 650 and 750 mounts were no AP , thats for sure!!!

Chas P.

Non sequitur. The discussion is about the pending LXD-75.

The LXD-750 is an GEM/EQ version of the LX200 "Classic" and looks beefy in the
photos I've seen (in the Yahoo group's photo gallery).

Looks like it has!!!!!!!!!!
http://telescopes.net/TELESCOPES/MEA...__newtonia.htm

Julius

"matt" wrote in message
.. .
does anybody have any confirmation of when is the Meade LXD75 series
shipping ? Any shipments yet ?
Does anybody how this thing is going to have PEC and 3 star alignment
using
the Autostar 497 that it is supposed to ship with ?
Does this mount have a guiding port or would guiding be limited to the
Meade
LPI serial guiding commands ?

best regards,
Matt Tudor

gotta love those corporate marketing guys. They'd make George Orwell proud .
Ministry of truth was nothing compared to our daily ads . Here are some
examples from the lxd75 ads:

-"Diffraction Limited Optics - Schmidt-Newtonian and Schmidt -Cassegrain
optics yield pinpoint stellar images over an extremely wide field-of-view
with only half the coma of standard Newtonians" -- one sentence and several
false statements , new definition for diffraction limited performance ,
extremely wide field SCT with pinpoint star mages across the field , all I
can say is WOW

- "corrector lens fully corrects for spherical aberration" -- they just
invented shperical aberration free SN and SCT scopes

-"corrector lenses and mirrors are *individually* figured" -- as opposed to
what, growing them in trees, this statement means even less than the older
hand figured claim . There's no method even for industrially making these
other than individually processing each part , even if it's on high speed
machines .

-" *Enhancements* supplied with the *standard precision* all metal 1.25"/2"
O.D. rack & pinion focuser" -- is standard precision here used as meaning
no longer the worst cheapest plastic focuser , and they didn't have the
nerve to call it real enhanced so they said it's enhanced because it's
standard precision rather than crappy.

-"LXD75 Series sets a new Meade standard in their price class for
sturdiness, precision operation and smoothness" -- this gets scary because
there are no other Meade products in this price class . They compete with
what, Celestron Advanced series and maybe Orion Skyview Pro if we consider
all mounts in this price class, and just the Celestron Advanced if were
talking goto . There's no other in this price class, so the implied new
quality standard set by these scopes could be as high or as low as anybody's
guess .

-"Meade engineers have created a virtually backlash-free equatorial
mount" -- when will they create a true backlash free as opposed to virtually
backlash free mount. Why didn't they call it made of virtual gold as opposed
to real gold .

-"enhanced precision alignment of the motor gear assembly for greatly
reduced backlash" -- so the virtually backlash free is actually enhanced
reduced baclash , I'm real slow at absorbing all these marketing
superlatives. All I understand now is whay they called it virtually backlash
free, because it's not really backlash free . Maybe they meant less play in
the rubber orings and plastics that supported the worms in older motors .

I used to have fun reading these things when I was younger ,thinking
that people could read between the lines and nobody would fall for such
inflated claims . Actually claims weren't that shameless back then . Now I
just have this vision of endless hordes of beginners being confused into
buying inadequate equipment for their goals and expecting it to perform,
then another cycle of millions of scopes abandoned in garages and another
generation of disillusioned amateurs giving up the hobby . But hey, Meade
CEO or whoever conceives these corporate strategies gets his millions in
bonuses and severance pay and the Celestron lawsuit is paid for and next
quarter looks good .

What is even more distressing is that all magazines, web reviews etc are
adopting the same tone. I haven't seen one single interferometric test for
these scopes published in a magazine like S&T , don't they know
interferometers even exist ? It's like time stood still for S&T, just before
the advent of cheap personal computers cheap lasers etc.
I haven't seen a single periodic error report for any mount , although one
doesn't need TheSKy with TPoint for this, even free tools like k3ccdtools
can do PE analysis . Some large players in this industry are relying on
vague definitions and lack of standards. They're getting away with more than
even car makers did 50 years ago . What's sad is that the public buys into
this marketing hype and are regarding these cheap products as good value .
The real good quality vendors are regarded as simply overpriced, elitist
etc. If I were Roland , Carl Zambuto, Al Nagler or others I'd simply make
all numbers public , both specificatins and real test values . No matter how
disappointing they might be for some people who like to look at their scope
certificate more than thru said scopes, these numbers would be light years
ahead of the real crap we're getting from mass produced scopes . The public
would get better educated to recognize a 1/6 PV wavefront instrument as
truly great, istead of the impossible 0.99995 Strehl claimed by some , or
the no numbers attitude adopted by most, or even worse, the 50mm x2000
department store scopes . Don't get me wrong, buying a Yugo is OK , unless
it's being represented as being a Rolls Royce , when it becomes fraud, false
advertising and morally wrong . Yeah, I know, what's that last word, haven't
heard it in a long time .


best regards,
matt tudor





"Szaki" wrote in message
news:qTKyc.38969$Sw.2285@attbi_s51...
Looks like it has!!!!!!!!!!

http://telescopes.net/TELESCOPES/MEA...XD75__N-6EC__N
EWTONIA/m_-_6___lxd75__n-6ec__newtonia.htm

Julius

"matt" wrote in message
.. .
does anybody have any confirmation of when is the Meade LXD75 series
shipping ? Any shipments yet ?
Does anybody how this thing is going to have PEC and 3 star alignment
using
the Autostar 497 that it is supposed to ship with ?
Does this mount have a guiding port or would guiding be limited to the
Meade
LPI serial guiding commands ?

best regards,
Matt Tudor