Well I only have two things to say in this thread
1) I spent many nights observing through the 9"
Oddie refractor at Mt Stromlo over several years, before it was tragically lost in the 2003 Canberra bushfire
, including having my 12" LX200GPS setup outside for direct comparison one night... and the views were definitely grander with better separation of close stars and planetary features, globular cores and kinda more
meaty through the Oddie.. overall image brightness and visibilty of galaxies and faint nebs etc was fairly comparible.
2) See 6" of Astrophyiscs genius
HERE 
Mike