[Wavytone]

Bob I too spent many Monday nights in the 70s with the Oddie, originally thanks to Ed Simmonds and before it was made accessible to others apart from the postgrad students at the observatory. While it was great for insane magnifications on the planets when seeing permitted it’s focal ratio made it pretty hopeless on DSOs. The little plate camera was ok but mainly for teaching the basics of plate photography for those who hadn’t learnt it in their undergrad course. I even used it as a guidescope with an 8” newtonian bolted on to take photos on several occasions.

But it really was a museum piece.

This may seem heretical to many here, but last year I put the refractor hype to the test with star tests on same objects through an assortment of three APOs 130-150mm side by side with a C6 a good 8” dob and my SW mak. The APOs included an AP Starfire 130 GT... nice scope but compared to the reflectors the only conclusion I came to is that the refractors are “try-hard wannabes” when it comes to real achromatism. As for resolution... sorry refractor guys, the 7” SW mak won every time and it matched them for contrast.

This was enough to wean me off refractors for good as the 7” mak won every comparison.

A 9” mak or SCT is about as big as I can lift and a 9” premium modern mak IMHO surpasses what the Oddie was able to do in every respect. A good 10” or 11” SCT ditto.