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Subject: Re: Pictor 201 - An Extended Evaluation
From: Brandon Jones
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Tue Nov 14 02:12:11 1995

From: Philip Perkins <philip.perkins@pop3.hiway.co.uk>
To: mapug@shore.net
Date sent: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 03:14:16 GMT
Subject: Re: Pictor 201 - An Extended Evaluation
Priority: normal
Send reply to: mapug@shore.net

> I also would like to be able to lock onto dimmer stars. Have been
> using Megastar to pre-plan potential targets for photographs. Print
> a map with object-of-interest and Mag 6 or better guide star just
> outside of photo field. Use the printed maps at the dark sites to
> select Pictor 201 assisted subjects.

...and my experience is that you will find extremely few mag 6 stars
within off-axis-guider range of those objects! I hope you can prove
me wrong, but I suspect you'll be left with only one or two out of
many dozens of objects you'd like to capture. Why should this be so?
Anyone who's done manual guiding knows that 9 times out of ten we'll
have nothing better than a mag 8, 9 or even 10 star to guide on. So
why should Meade expect to take our money for a device that will only
acquire mag 6 or brighter stars? Either they have no experience in
the matter or they are trying to take our money with an inadequate
device. Either way they should not have introduced the 201 in the
current state of development. The ability to work with mag 10 stars
should be a basic capability - the ST4 does it easily - moreover the
201 manual claims (falsely) to be capable of tracking mag 10 stars.

Is this backed up by several other users of the 201?? I have
had the next model up on order for several months now and am
wondering if meade are having problems with the software
to get the performance that you mentioned and this is the
reason for the production delay.Its possible I might give up
and buy Sbig in the end the same as everybody else.
Brandon S. Jones