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Hi Scott,
I have had my Meade truss 12 inch dob now for 6 years.
It is great value for money. Mine has been used quite often and has stood up well to the outdoor elements and being transported about.
As a visual observer, I find the scope to be well-suited to my needs.
Plenty of aperture and when collimated, it gives sharp images.
In my opinion, the biggest restraints on visual observing are skyglow and seeing. If you can get to a darker site, galaxies will look far more spectacular and when the seeing is very good, you will see fantastic detail in the planets and you will easily split the closest of double stars. Having said this, a 12 inch dob has a great advantage over smaller more expensive goto imaging scopes.
As others have said, you will need a collimator. I collimate my scope every time I disassemble and assemble it. The primary mirror springs on my Lightbridge were way too weak and the mirror unit shifted about. I went to Bunnings and bought some heavy springs, cut them down and they work fine. They were cut to about 1.5 times the size of the originals i.e. longer.
For visual observing, I also use an 8x50mm finderscope. Zero power finders (red dot, Telrads etc) are great for getting you into the area but not so good for finding those faint objects.
The 26mm eyepiece supplied is low power (1500/26 = 58x). I suggest you get the Bintel 2 inch 2x ED barlow ($79). Combined with the 26mm (58 x 2 = 116x), at least it will give you a closer view of objects like the planets. At this stage, I wouldn't waste money buying cheap low-end eyepieces.
Regards, Rob
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