Spending after buying!

I find it interesting that some one would buy a scope that needed several aftermarket items to make it useful! I hear all the time how "This is a nice scope once you buy this part and that and install them"! Why would you not consider these to be faults with the original scope. I would be a little miffed to find that I needed to add a few $100's of dollars in "upgrades" before my new $3,500 scope was easy to use or setup!

Maybe I am just picky?

I've been thinking a lot about that very issue, but take the exact opposite opinion. Does any scope really come complete with all the eyepieces, filters, finders, controls, dew management, collimators, mounts, encoders, doohickies and dinguses that everybody will want to hang on it for the rest of the time they own it? Of course not, because not everybody has the same ideas for what would make it perform at it's best.

What I've been pondering is why so many low to medium end scopes give the *illusion* that they come more or less complete. For instance, why even bother to include low-end plossls and junk finderscopes when those items are most likely to wind up basically unused after a few initial attempts? Personally, I'd much rather have the cost of those items deducted from the initial sales price.

I wonder how many folks get frustrated with their scopes based mostly on the low quality of the orig. accessories?
I note that most high end scopes don't come with accessories, but must be pieced together by the end user. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.

I do wish that more retailers were more upfront with their ad copy in terms of really letting the public be aware of what that $300 scope would cost to get up and running. Just a thought, but I tend to think in terms of at least doubling the cost of the scope by the time I add the necessary add-ons. And that's before we even get started talking about necessary star charts, correct height chair, etc. ad naseum.

Mike Swaim

No, you are not being picky. I looked over my "wish" list and modifications for the following scopes:

A C9.25, to be mounted on a Losmandy GM8 or G11:
1) Flocking
2) Dew shield
3) Change the visual back to accept 2" eyepieces
4) Losmandy dovetail plate
5) Mounting rings for dovetail plate
6) Replace finder
7) Lymax cooler, or equivalent

A high quality 10" Newtonian, to be mounted on the same:
1) Flocking
2) Replace focuser with 2-speed focuser
3) Laser collimator
4) Barlow for collimation
5) Paracorr
6) Mark primary mirror for collimation purposes

I agonized over the choices and I continue to do so. Only with high end manufacturers like Takahashi are most of these modifications already done.

All depends on how you look at really. It’s kind of like the people who buy a Civic and mod it up to look and perform(well...) like a BMW. By the end if done right the Civic will have cost you the same as a BMW but some people like to tinker with there gear. I don’t know about the new GPS scopes but the classic LX200's had metal gears and they where really ready to go right from the factory. I think a more appropriate example is the LXD55 scopes. You really need to crack that mount open and do some major overhauls basically out of the box. But you know what, I kind of enjoy doing that kind of stuff. It is defiantly not for beginners and the sad part is that beginners are the ones who buy the cheaper gear. If you are not happy with the LX200 then what are you happy with? AP? To get setup with an AP scope and mount that will even approach the performance of a LX200 you would likely spent $15,000. How many of us have $15k to spend on a scope and mount? I know I don’t.