I Like your combo. Now here is another fun scope that my wife designed and built in a day. We call it our Kiddie Scope (built for our 4 year old). A common question we get is ... Does that really work? Yes it does. It's made with with a Meade 4.5" F8 spherical mirror, Lumicon helical focuser, 1" secondary, Orion EZ Finder, and about 4 lbs of counterweight as the origional design was way too light. Overall, the entire scope including the counterweights is about 10-12 lbs. John Zeigler www.JohnsTelescopes.com <http://www.JohnsTelescopes.com> www.MirrorKits.com <http://www.MirrorKits.com> -----Original Message----- From: Rob Ratkowski [mailto:ratkwski@maui.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 12:44 PM To: Utah Valley Astronomy Association Subject: RE: [UVAA] Scope Length Aloha Big scopes are nice BUT they do as you said create problems (weight, storage,transport,mount) and with the long focal length create a narrow field of view. Again, one scope to do everything (wide field to deep observing AND bright) good luck. The solution in my opinion is to get a wide field refractor and mount it on the main scope. My old C-8 has an inexpensive 80mm refractor from Orion and sometimes is more fun than my C-8 or my 12.5, so get two scopes, it'll cost less and be much more fun. Aloha from Dark Skys Maui Rob PS Here's how the C-8/ST-80 look