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Having used a Planewave CDK17 now for several years I am very happy with Planewave. They also really back you up after you buy. For example I told Rick at the Gold Coast my scope tended to have a hot spot with the 16803 chip making flat fielding difficult and critical. He sent me one of these baffles for the primary mirror for free. He in the past has sent me free baffles for the corrector and he also offered to send me a replacement focuser once when I accidentally loosened something that allowed some packers that set the focuser to be square. I managed to handle it myself but that after sales service is awesome.
The baffles are very important to the CDK design as the only weakness of the system I have found has been excessive hot spot/vignetting on large chipped cameras.
The later and larger models also have side fans to remove the thermal boundary layer, I don't see that on the 14. But 14inch CDK that is light enough to cart around would be a magic instrument.
The Planewave focuser has always been one of the best around. It never slips, never is loose and is as strong as hell.
Planewave CDKs are also very easy to collimate and seem to keep collimation really well. Also the carbon fibre is great as focus tends to be the same each night if the ambient temp is similar.
I wonder about dew heaters though. I find the primary takes a few hours with the fans going to meet the ambient (its hotter than ambient and takes a while to cool). If the primary is more than about .8C above the ambient it tends to give softer images. .1 is max sharpness, 1C is a bit too much, 3 is way too much. So if you heat the mirror to above ambient I wonder if that results in less sharp images. So perhaps no free lunch for dew prevention there and possible consequences.
Greg.
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