Interesting point, Doug, but I don't know how you can expect the premier astrophotography competition in Australia to cater for
everyone with every budget and every gear available.
It's like complaining about a national photography competition because you've only got a 1.3 megapixel point and shoot camera.
These top-level competitions are meant to showcase and highlight the best astrophotographers (both amateur and semi-pro) that Australia has to offer. And it does a damn fine job at doing that.
I agree that it's near impossible for your typical amateur with entry level gear to compete in the deep-space category against the brilliant images produced on high-end gear by the likes of Mike, Jase, Martin etc.
But that's not a fault of the competition.
Maybe the competition could have split categories for DSLR's and CCD's. But even DSLR's are blurring the lines these days. Modded and non-modded. Cooled and non-cooled. And for CCD's, where does the DSI fit? Or the Orion imager? Yeh they're CCD's but the quality they produce is more in line with DSLR's - they don't match against the SBIG's and FLI's etc.
Maybe there just needs to be a separate competition, for amateurs on entry level gear. Put a price cap on the equipment you can use to get the images. Then it really will come down to you on your gear with your processing. But even then, where do you draw the line?
Your Tak will produce better images than my ED80. Your QHY8 will produce better images than my unmodded 350D.
It's impossible to please everyone and have a category for everyone.
I think the DM awards are an excellent showcase for the talent in this country. The rules may need some fine tuning for rent-a-scope data and maybe some category tuning, which has already been discussed
in this thread, but apart from that, I think the DM awards are fine as they are.