Meade Starfinder 10" EQ

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Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
First the bad: The focuser is junk. Collimation without a laser is very difficult (unless you are comfortable with doing this at night with an out of focus star). The finder scope doubles as a toy in a McDonald's Happy Meal.
This scope MUST be collimated perfectly or aberrations will occur. A laser collimator is essential. Get the laser collimator first. When I got the laser, I saw just how out of collimation I was (and here I thought I was close, NOT!). This error caused endless problems with viewing any planet and I missed a year of detail in the galactic arm. After the laser, detail on planets was a sinch, even when getting close with the 3x Televue Barlow. This scope stays in collimation pretty well. At the beginning of every session, collimation is easy with a laser (Orion makes a nice one).
The focuser is just bad…No, its worse than that Jim, it sucks. A JMI RCF or an NGF-DX3 (what I have) are needed.
Any red eye finder (like a Telrad or Orion) should be included with this scope. These things are so easy to use. As for replacing the finder, does anyone know where to get a good one with a 90 degree elbow on it?
Occasionally the drive assembly/mount has to be tightened, but it tracks just fine, even for short CCD work. The optional Meade declination control works very well too.
The optics are wonderful (after collimation). I have got down to 14Mag in my light polluted suburban back yard. Use some filters for the planets because of this scope's speed. A variable polarizer works nice as do the Meade and Celestron color filters. A Lumicon 0-III on the Veil Nebula is just magnificent. It appears that Meade put killer optics with less than quality accouterments. The tube is very sturdy, and no, this is not what you pour cement into. It is about 5 times thicker than a sono tube for cement.
I just wish Meade offered a real deluxe package with a good focuser, a laser collimator, and a better finder. I bet it would sell.
So, with the upgrades, this scope runs $1000 with the above suggestions. Not bad for a 10 inch. ($700 for the scope/mount $200 for the NGF DX3, less for an RCF, and about $100 for and Orion laser collimator and red eye finder).
Any comments/questions: coldwarrior1@yahoo.com

Overall Rating: 7
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=40083

Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
Star tests well at around 1/5th wave on the primary. decent contrast ( inside of the tube needs to be dealt with however ). Finder sucks. Focuser is usable with a few mods ( will be upgrading though ). Objective cell is excellent. Mount is plenty sturdy with damping times of 3-4 seconds. The tube straps need to be replaced or highly modified ( I chose to modify them using some vise-grips e-mail me if you wanna see it ). With a little work it is an excellent value.

John
fruitcake650@hotmail.com

Overall Rating: 8
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=40084

Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
What I have is a bad quality mirror (quite far from parabolic), blend viewfinder, hard to control clocker, rough focuser, hard to adjust tilt of prime and especially diagonal mirrors.
Only advantage is rate of price/diameter. Deep sky are excelent! And after all I would repeat my choice. But I could not recomend the scope for planets and double stars observers.

Overall Rating: 8
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=40085

Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
If you replace the crappy focusser, this becomes a very nice scope. Otherwise, the rocking, backlash, and other mechanical flaws of the plasticrap focusser will completely spoil your views.

The mount is a bit light for the scope, but adequate for visual use. There is no provision for accurate polar alignment.

Good optics and ample aperture make this a great visual scope (replace the crappy focusser). For the money, it's excellent value.

P.S. I replaced the crappy focusser with a JMI NGF DX3, which is quite a nice Crayford unit, but almost anything would be better than the Meade #77 plasticrap.

Overall Rating: 8
Optics:8 Mount:5 Ease of Use:7 Value:9
Weight: 3 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=74817

Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
Excelent telescope i'm very happy with this scope, very good optics

Overall Rating: 8
Optics:9 Mount:7 Ease of Use:7 Value:9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=110948

Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
This scope cheaply built and poorly designed. The mirror is OK but not great. Knowing what I know now about telescopes, I would not have purchased it, I would have spent a little more and had something better, Starmaster, Obsession etc. Something like that would have held its resale better and I would have had more enjoyment from it. Bottom line, don't waste your time and money buying cheap stuff, do yourself a favor and get top quality from the start. You will not regret it in the long run.

Overall Rating: 5
Optics:7 Mount:5 Ease of Use:5 Value:5
Weight: 10 (Trustworthy Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=112367

Meade Starfinder 10" EQ
Great OTA, very poor mounting. Optics could have been rated an 8 except for the focuser and finder. The mount is terrible. Replace the wingnuts on the legs and tighten them with a wrench. Straps holding the tube makes setup a pain in the back. Replace the knurl nuts on the straps with hex nuts and tighten them (carefully) with a wrench also. If you want it to track at all it needs to be balanced. Removing the motor drive cover and fiddling with a slot screwdriver on the three clutch screws whenever you want to rebalance the scope: rediculous! I replaced those with three allen head screws and saved the mount from the trash can. Wish I would have bought something with better resale value. Now I'm stuck.

Overall Rating: 5
Optics:7 Mount:2 Ease of Use:2 Value:8
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=311080

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