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Vespine,
No your not making a mountain out of a molehill and your wise to ask the questions before you part with your hard earned cash.
The 2" 32mm FMC GSO eyepiece is a kellner design and useless in an F5 scope, it is woefull. I have no idea why it's packaged with the scope and not done away with. The 30mm GSO Superview is a clearly superior eyepiece in every respect and only a little more expensive. That is the eyepiece that should come packaged with these scopes from all retailers. It is not as good as the premium widefields but is pretty good and good enough to keep you going for a at least a couple of years into the future. I would pay $40 or $50 extra if necessary, to be able to get this eyepiece instead of the 2" 32mm GSO Kellner. The Superview is quite useable and a reasonable eyepiece, the Kellner is useless IMO.
The 1.25" plossls that are supplied with the scope are fair and you may be happy with them to get started. However in the whole scheme of things they are not great eyepieces, if you can get a credit from the retailer against those I would do that as well. For that scope with a Focal length of 1500 millimeters and a fast light cone at F5 I would be looking 2 get 2 decent eyepieces and a barlow as opposed to low/medium grade eyepieces that you are considering. The Meade series 4000 plossls are not much better than the GSO plossls and not worth the time and effort IMO. The Meade Series 5000 plossls are not great in a fast scope which is what you are considering buying.
If you're buying the scope from Bintel (a great dealer BTW, as is myastroshop)I would try to get a credit against all the normally supplied eyepieces and take a 30mm Bintel (GSO) Superview, a 17mm Orion Stratus and a 13mm Orion Stratus. I would couple these to a good 1.25" barlow like the Orion Shorty Plus, Meade #140 barlow or Televue 2x barlow. The Orion Stratus are about $180 each but offer 90% of the performance of a premium widefield at 40% of the price. They work fairly well in an F5 scope, or at least the 17mm, which I have tried does. If these options are outside your budget I would substitute the Orion Stratus eyepieces for the 18mm and the 12mm UO Optics HD orthos which cost about $125 each and offer superb image quality across a slighlty narrow AFOV of 45 deg. Another good option would be the 15mm and 11mm Televue plossls ($145) combined with a good 2x barlow. Again with the TV plossls the FOV is a little narrow at 50 deg, but like the UO HD orthos they offer superb image quality across the entire FOV.
CS-John B
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