Few impressions of some fine scopes and accessories we played with at Snake Valley:
Jodie's 10" + Argonavis (Dave47's old scope) was a big hit. Micheal and Ian (from Tassie) seemed to be having a ball with it finding lots of DSOs. It really helped out with finding planetaries that I could find on the charts but could not distinguish from stars in wide angle EPs due to small angular size.
Big and bigger high-end refractors were great to try out: Stu's Tak 102, Julians AP 130 and Peter's Tak. Very nice crisp images and excellent contrast. BUT I have no refractor fever! I like my Dob. I preferred it on Jupiter to the the AP 130. It's nuts when you think about it. $400 scope vs $17000 scope. I could see more detail in the $400 scope (aperture does rule!), and using high contrast EPs like TV plossl and UO HDs the contrast is very good too (not like the apos of course but respectable). Interestingly the apo that impressed me the most was the smallest one: Stu's 102mm Tak. I did not expect to see so much detail on Saturn through the relatively small aperture.
I was somewhat surprised that all the Naglers I looked through showed stray light on planets: little dancing reflected light ("fairy" as Daniel called it) bouncing around the field in response to any head movement. I don't know how one can pay so much money for Naglers and think that this kind of build/design flaw is acceptable.
The piece of equipment I was most impressed with was Daniel's 22mm LVW. Edge performance at f5 was clearly superior to the 19mm Panoptic, certainly the best I've seen. Daniel and even Stu the big Pano-fan can back me up on this one. The LVW 8mm was not quite as good with more geometric aberrations and false colour near the edge, very similar to the Stratus 8mm.
I've been convinced by the superiority of Saxon Dobs (or SkyWatcher Dobs) over the GS, in terms of finish and functionality. 1) The paint on the Saxon OTA is tough, durable and white, much like on good quality whitegoods. The GS has one thin coat of paint in grey/silver colour that peels off easy. It peeled off with the double sided tape when I moved my Telrad. Not a hint of rust on the Saxon. 2) The friction control on the Saxon is far better than the springs on the GS. This is because you have continuous control and you can adjust the tension as you are moving the scope around: one hand on the end of the tube moving it around and the other on the tension handle.