[mic_m (Michael)]

I realise that there has been some hearsay about the SW’s Autotracking's GOTO ability but I assume that Andrews is selling the SW Autotracking dobs that appear on the SW website which apear to be GOTO capable (they are explicitly stated to be GOTO capable on the SW site), but perhaps you need to buy the SynScan controller separately to achieve this.

Here is the link to the scope on the SW website:
http://www.skywatchertelescope.net/s...1=1&class2=106

I did not mean to imply that the price of the XTg should be in line with the SW soley because thay are simmilar scopes made by the same manufacturer. Rather, it was my comparisons based on the implicit shipping costs of other Orion dobs that led me to expect the price to be close to the SW.

Consider the following for the 12” Orion XTg:

The AU price is $2810 which is about US$2615.

The US price of the 12” Orion XTg is $1599.

So the implicit cost of shipping those dobs to Australia is (US$2615- US$1599) US$1016.

Do the same calculations for the 12” XTi which is 8kg lighter than the XTg, but about the same dimensions, and you get a shipping cost of US$500.

Do the same calculations for the XX14i which is 9kg heavier then the XTg and you get a shipping cost of about US$800.

So the shipping cost of the XTg is substantial, being US$200 more to ship than the XX14i and US$500 more than the XTi.

Given the preceding I was expecting a shipping cost somewhere between the 12” XTi and XX14i, about US$650 for the XTg. Add this to the US price of $1599 and you would get a total cost of US$2249 (AU$2412), a price close to the SW.

IMHO the pricing of the Orion XTi and XX series in Austrlaia is very reasonable at the moment it is just the XTg series that seems expensive based on my reasoning above.