by Jason Newquist
After a year of on-again, off-again observing with a TeleVue 101 apochromatic refractor, I realized that I had aperture fever. I had tasted the lucre of galaxies in the medium to large dobsonians belonging to many of the people in TAC, my local observing group, and I was hooked. With the coming of spring 2001, I decided to get a second telescope, and the research began.
My budget was very limited, which was frustrating at first, because I really had my eye on a Starmaster 11 or 12 inch telescope. But it cost a lot more than I was willing or able to spend, and I had serious concerns for carting around an scope larger than 8 inches in my 2-door car.
At first, I placed my budgetary mark at $500-700, and my aperture range at 8-10 inches. Any more than that, and I'd be REALLY sacrificing quality, and besides, going from 4 to 10 inches is a large enough gain. An 8-10 incher would leave room for a 15-18 incher as the next substantial step up.
I considered the Orion SkyQuest XT8 and XT10 as well as the scopes of many other brands, and of those two, I opted for the metal-tubed XT10. At $650, the XT10 is a reasonably good value. Plus, Orion was local to the bay area, so I could save myself the $100 shipping charge and go down and pick up the scope in Watsonville in the afternoon. I was a little concerned about the metal tube, but at only 48 inches in length, the benefits would outweigh the problems. Probably.
But then I found the Discovery Premium DHQ series. Or, rather, they grew on me. I had placed my order for the XT10 and was listening to the SkyQuest Yahoo Group. It sounded like the people on the list had a whole list of modifications that they were making to their scopes to render them "smooth" and "nice" and "pleasurable." At first, I thought that for only $650, a little elbow grease would not be objectionable, and might even be fun. Dobs have a long history of being "project" scopes, and many of their owners take pride in tinkering with them, or even building them from scratch.
It was during this time that I found myself returning to the Discovery PDHQ pages and reading reviews on them. They were beyond my original price range, at $950, but for that extra money, I would get a JMI focuser, a reputedly excellent Discovery pyrex mirror, reflective coatings on the primary and secondary which were much better than the Orion's, a nicer mount, a laser collimator, and my choice of a 7x50 finder or Telrad. I cancelled the order for the Orion and placed an order for the Discovery PDHQ 10.
It arrived 7 weeks later. For around $1000 I thought I was getting a scope with excellent optics, and superior mechanical operation than the Orion. It was, however, larger. At f/6, the tube is a staggering 61 and 13/16 inches long and 57 pounds in weight. But it fit in the car!
The Discovery packaging was good, with "sticky" foam coating the boxes containing the base and the tube. The mirror and other accessories came in a separate box, and were undamaged.
To review, my goals for this telescope were:
In moving up from the XT10, I was compromising on cost and portability, but not so much on either as to offset the gains in optical and mechanical quality I was hoping to get.
Read on to discover how the Discovery PDHQ 10 performs against these objectives!
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Updated on 06/04/2001 10:57:30 PM