how good are dobs

yea, once you go above 10 inches, they amount of difficulty moving these scopes grows exponentially with size.

Dave_Lillis wrote: yea, once you go above 10 inches, they amount of difficulty moving these scopes grows exponentially with size.

Anything above 10" -truss tube or collapsible dobs are recommended from a transport point of view. All depends how much you want to spend.

thanks for all the advice much appreciated. i am leaning towards the skywatcher 200p as its well within my budget and a good size to handle has anyone got one of them to tell me about ? i,ll hopefully try get one in the coming weeks befor the man in the red suit gets his hand on me stash lol.thanks again

astroman145 wrote: thanks for all the advice much appreciated. i am leaning towards the skywatcher 200p as its well within my budget and a good size to handle has anyone got one of them to tell me about ? i,ll hopefully try get one in the coming weeks befor the man in the red suit gets his hand on me stash lol.thanks again

I have one. It's the truss version but I don't think it's any lighter/heaver than the non-truss version.
I find it's very easy to move around and setup provided you move the base and OTA separately (or maybe I'm just a weakling!!).

Quality is very good and I've had no problems with mine.

I have a saloon car and I have no problems putting the base ion the back seat but I would have problems fitting the base from a bigger scope in the car. This would not be a problem if you had a hatchback/liftback/estate where the back seats can be folded down.

Michael.

All good advice. I have a Meade 12 LB. To be honest, it's not like picking up, say, an apple! But, it is manageable with just one person. As I'm sure you've seen- the truss designs are slightly different in the meade's and SW. The Meade truss poles come off completely when transporting, while the SW poles collapse into the primary cell bringing the secondary cell with it. I think, as long as you aren't carrying the setup too far, a 10" or 12" will be fine. If need be, you can always get some sort of small trolley.

But yes, dobs are brilliant!!!!

Sean