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wasn't able to slew "backwards" so I've never encountered R.A. backlash before.

As mentioned above, I had several questions that I could not answer from either past experiences or

consultation of the manual (such as it is.) (Ron Ezra, if you are reading through this long, boring account

please see if you can answer these questions. If anyone else knows the answers, please feel free to chime in.)

1. If the unit is being run from an external power source such as a motorcycle battery, should be internal

battery pack be disconnected? I assume it should but haven't looked at the control card to see if the two

power sources are diode isolated from one another. The manual makes no mention of this situation. [There

are no problems connecting both - they are isolated in the design.]

2. When will the Magellan II controllers be available? I ordered one with the scope and was told that they

were back-ordered without an availability date. Astronomics has yet to see even the first sample of this unit.

[The Magellan II controllers became available in June 1996.]

3. If the tracking rate adjustment feature of the drive is used, is it supposed to remember the setting after a

power off/on cycle. The manual isn't clear on this point but it doesn't seem to hold the programming during

power off. This is a bit of a nuisance since power must be turned off to plug or unplug the fan, CCD, etc.

This same question applies to all the programmable settings such as N/S hemisphere, controller direction, etc.

These did not seem to "stick", so unless I am doing something wrong, I assume that the functions must be

reprogrammed each time power is applied. That's very tedious and bothersome. [This is operating as

designed. These parameters are not held in permanent memory and must be reprogrammed each time power

is removed -- nuisance as it is.]

For those of you who have hung in this long, now we get to the real question everyone always wants to

know -- "how does it perform optically?" The short answer is very well! I am quite pleased with the optical

components of the scope. I have heard the words "refractor-like" to describe the images in the 7" Mak, but

having had no experience with refractors, I can't use those words. The images are quite sharp and pleasantly

high in contrast, though. Below, I will relate my observations during the first outing with the 7" Mak.

Sky conditions were not very conducive to a detailed star test, but I quickly got a pretty good feel for the

capabilities of the scope. I would rate seeing this night informally about a 5 -- an average night in the suburbs.

The transparency was pretty good, but there was considerable turbulence in the air. Being in town with

houses all around didn't help any. The outside temperature during the outing dropped from about 55 F to

about 45 F during the four hours I was set up. The moon was 5 days past first quarter and dominated the sky.

Immediately after setting the scope up, the images were mediocre. Looking over my house roof at Venus

showed the effects of extreme heat turbulence as would be expected. After a quick look at the writhing

terminator of the gibbous moon, I decided to hook up the fan and let the temperature stabilize for a while.

I let the fan run for about 15 minutes and went back to look again. The scope now performed much better.

Over the next hour, the images improved even more. Focusing was crisp and the star images looked quite

clean. The Trapezium was as good a view as I remember ever seeing. I looked at a variety of objects for a

while and then took a break for a while. After the scope had been out for about 2 hours, I took a stab at the

star test. The fan had been off for about an hour at this point and the star test showed atmospheric turbulence

and a very strong tube temperature stratification. The out of focus star image was strongly "pinched" and

distorted on one side. Moving to another star elsewhere in the sky made the "pinch point" slide around the

image and settle in a new spot. I quickly cut power, connected the fan, and resumed power while trying to

watch the image. Within a few seconds of turning the fan on, the out of focus image cleaned up beautifully!

Within minutes, the fan could be turned off without the distortion returning. (It did come back slowly over the

next hour, though, as temperatures continued to stabilize.)

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Meade 7" LX-50 Maksutov Review

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Meade 7" LX-50 Maksutov 1

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