Binoviewers and barlows

Two problems: I've got a lot of money already invested in my eyepiece case, and I'm cheap. So binoviewing wasn't in the cards--that is until Burgess Optical came out with a TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR BINOVIEWER! The problem is that their 1.5 relay is still in production, and dealer websites say just to use a shorty 2x barlow. I've heard it said (I think it was Todd Gross) that a 2x barlow on these set ups will often give substantially MORE than 2x. Does anybody out there have any real world experience with a barlowed binoviewer? Thanks in advance,
Larry Seguin
Taos, New Mexico

Larry,

My only experience with using a standard barlow with a binoviewer was a LOMO binoviewer I had several years ago. The 2x barlow that was included with that binoviewer provided approximately 4x.

As I recall, when TeleVue first came out with their BinoVue, they used the bottom half of a standard 2x TV barlow as a corrector, since Al hadn't yet designed the current 2x corrector. I seem to remember that the advertised magnification with that setup was around 3.8x.

Hope this helps,
Doug
Midway, FL