That little bargain scope? Maybe . . .

A 70mm F5 Meade refractor, two "super Plossl" eyepieces, a 2X barlow, tripod and very functional soft carrying case that holds everything – all for $119? You gotta be kidding. Nope. So I bought it. And now I've tried it. And now I've made some necessary repairs and I need to try it again. (I saw this scope being sold by one major retailer for $280, by several others for $180, and by OpticsPlanet, where I bought it, for $119, plus free shipping. )

The big question that remains is the quality of the optics. My first impression is they are acceptable at best. But – exactly what in the optics are poor is not clear. The objective lens? If so, I'm stuck. But it may be the cheapy little 45-degree, correct-image diagonal. Or it may be the eyepieces.

I can't advise anyone to rush out and buy one of these bargain scopes – especially a beginner. But I still have hopes that even with mediocre optics it may turn out to be the bargain I first thought it was. There are some surprising – for me – details. In fact, there are a few little things I really like about this scope – like the case and slow motion controls.

Slow motion controls are really handy, but the typical design with the small thumb screws to tighten on the flat side of a shaft frequently don’t work well for me. The ones with the Meade attached in a more positive way with a but that slid over them and locked them tight. What's more, the vertical one has enough travel to work through 90 –degrees and the horizontal ne has a good range as well.

And the case? It's cloth and doesn't look like it will stand a whole lot of wear, but there are neat pockets and loops, and stiff padding so that every part of the scope fits in it nicely. (A case came with an 80mm scope I bought recently, but all it holds is the optical tube. ) That, plus close focusing (roughly 20-feet) , makes this a nice little demo scope to take to Scout and school groups when I just want to demonstrate some basic principles indoors.

The tripod is flimsy, but the head is rugged and works well and the scope is tuny, so it doesn't ver-power the tripod. Hmmmm… on the positive side, call the tripod "light." Well, for that matter, call the whole thing light.

What can you see with it? The same things you can see with a pair of 15X70, or 20X80 binoculars – except to mount those is more expansive and more cumbersome. And newbies have trouble pointing them at anything except the moon. I tried it on a last quarter moon this morning and it certainly provides a nice starting point for lunar observing – as do binoculars. I want folks to do simple exercises. S, for example, I may give them a simplified map of the entire face of the moon, then ask them to draw the terminator. I think that task is much simpler with a scope like this, than with binoculars. For one thing, you can let go of the scope, then quickly glance back and forth between it and the paper where you’re drawing.

Anything else? It takes in the Pleiades nicely – tried it last night – and the Orion Nebula. I also tried it this morning on Albireo – split easily at 14X – and Mizar. Mizar need 28X to split – and it continued to dance a bit. I wanted to go to higher power, but ran into a problem getting the 10mm eyepiece to focus. I knew there was travel left, but the focuser didn't want to move. (What is that stuff? Chinese bear grease?)

When I got the scope in the house this morning I took the focuser apart, cleaned off the grease – there were some teeth missing as well – and added my own silicone grease. Seems to work fine now, but the house is a lot warmer than the 10-degree temperatures which the scope had endured all night.

My general impression of the optics were they were low contrast and it was difficult to achieve really sharp focus. Of course, the seeing was pretty bad and there were high winds rattling the little scope. So I'll give it another chance -and try a different diagonal – before passing final judgment on the optics.

Stay tuned . . .