Meade Model 300 3.1" Refractor
1986 f/15 80mm refractor on an equatorial mount, essentially a Towa 339 imported and painted to Meade specs. This instrument is almost a perfect duplicate of my Towa 339 with the exception of the eyepieces included and some electrical mount changes. Focuser, finder, objective cell and baffles are the same.
The Instrument was recieved from Houston Texas along with the manual, a 1985 Meade catalogue, a 1987 Orion catalogue, warranty card and some misc. instruction sheets for the mount. Overall condition is very good with a few paint chips and scrapes and some scratches on the chrome barrel of the drawtube which was still .965" at this date. Nothing that can't be remedied with some paint and buffing and polishing, to say I am pleased is an understatement as I have not seen very many of these intruments available.
Essentially identical to the Towa Manual.
Circle 'T', the scope is a rebadged and repainted 339.
The mount has a 9V battery holder with switch and rheostat for illuminated eyepiece and map light.
Three Meade Modified Achromats....25mm, 12mm, and 9mm, basically kellner design.
Pristine objective lens with coatings flawless in an adjustable hastings cell.
Objective view of laser alignment test.
Focuser view of laser test, fine tunimg done with a Cheshire eyepiece.
1985 Meade catalogue entry.
1987 Orion catalogue with pricing, compare with the Celestron, by this time the only Towa scopes Meade was still supplying were 60mm refractors, the 80mm was relaced with a Japanese Mizar ota and mount at f/11. Later model years were supplied from Chinese manufacturers.
More 1985 Meade catalogue goodies for scopes, note the diagonal #917 hybrid which is a Japanese made diagonal that is head and shoulders above the presently available asian models in quality.
First Light Report
Setup the mount with the built in level and roughly aligned on North, then attached the counter weight and the OTA. Next aligned the finder on a distant chimney and I was ready.
First up was venus, very low over the rooftops at 10 degrees altitude. The crescent came up nice and sharp with the uneven terminator obvious, Orthoscopic eyepieces up to 133X used, a little color present due to the low elevation with red to blue along the vertical axis. next was Jupiter showing a white disk with no color and a wealth of cloud belt detail, maximum used was 133X.
Arcturus was used for a star test and with straight through viewing, the pattern was good in focus and both inside and outside. With the Towa .965" diagonal this was duplicated, with the Meade #917 hybrid there was some flattening of the rings towards the bottom of the field. After testing the diagonal in the daylight, it seems that the prism is square but the focuser end of the diagonal must be carefully inserted to sit square in the focuser, this is something that I have found with cheap asian hybrid diagonals before, so I elected to use the original with a Lumicon .965/1.25 adapter with 1 1/14" eyepieces.
Second Light Report
5 minute setup, aligned on pole and observing Mars at 6.9" disk diameter, sketch made with filtered view and even at 200X using a 6mm orthoscopic eyepiece the detail holds up.
Orion EQ-2 drive adapted to the mount by drilling out the motor mount cylinder to 9/16", works great!
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