Anyone got the LX200R yet?

Will be placing an order for a new scope in the next month or so and am still having jitters over the final decision.
10" LX200R or CPC925.
I'm worried about the quality checking on the 200Rs, I heard a few woeful tales. I've also heard some very satisfied customer tales on the 200R optics, and was wondering if anyone on these boards has any experience of the same.

Hi John,


It really depends on what you want to do if you want to do astrophotography than neither are good enough because both require a wedge witch I do not recommend for guiding. you would be better off buying an equatorial witch would be better for you in the long run, and would probably be cheaper then buying a scope and a wedge.just my two cents worth.hope this helps you in your decision

Hi John,
The 200R is basiacally a 200 GPS (that I have) with slightly better optics.
There are tens of thousands of these scopes in operation all over the world. Many of these scope are used by very experienced imagers that produce premium results.
But as you expect with those kinds of numbers, there will be and there are some problems with specific scopes. However, the vast majority of users are very satisfied with their scopes. I am a member of the 200 GPS/R yahoo news group from its inception. We have endavoured to measure the fault/satisfaction ratio in the group and whilst this has not been scientifically measured the fault percentage was around 4% which in my opinion is a reasonable percentage in any productized scentific instrument.
So in my view: if you want one, get one. You will be impressed and satisfied.
As we are a long way away from the manufacturer and as dealers do nothing more then send your scope on to the manufacturer for any significant repair/alignment it is not worth to pay highly inflated pricing for these kind of scopes in Europe.
You can import these scopes directly from the USA whilst eliminating the risk that you would get a lemon. If you are interested to learn how to do that you may contact me off line and I will fill you in.

Best regards
Jouke

Hi,
One of the lads here in Limerick got a 10" LX200R a few months ago.
He has had no problems with it at and the views are excellent through it.
From what I can see on the yahoo groups, the quality issues seem to be with the RCX scopes.
I use a wedge with the 12" and its grand for a permanent observatory, but for a mobile setup, it does require more time to setup. I haven't experienced any flexure problems with the wedge, the real issue is can you get the periodic error down to an acceptable value on the RA drive, something I'm working on at the moment, I recently discovered my autoguider was icing up thus mis-leading the scope into doing some wierd movements. This is remedied now, but have been unable to test the system due to weather.

Like Jouke says, get it overseas if possible, I wouldn't buy a new big scope on this side of the atlantic, there are ways around these things.

If you're going to get a wedge, DO NOT get the standard wedge, its too under engineered, the super wedge does a good job, there is a bit of slop in some of the bars which can be eliminated with some insulating tape (to fill up the spaces) I was sceptical about this solving the problem, but it works surprisingly well, although it is a cheapo solution.

One more thing, I'd recommend joining the lx200r, lx200 and CGE yahoo groups (I'm in there myself) and monitor the posts for a week or so and get a feel for what issues people are having. You can always put up questions there to get more opinions.

Thanks Dave I'll have a look there.