Advantages: GOTO makes faint fuzzies easy, more time for observing.
Disadvantages: Heavy, just carryable by one if you are strongish.

...The Meade 12" LX200GPS with UHTC (£3999) is a big beast of a scope. It is a Schmidt Cassegrain telescope, which basically means it has a conveniently short tube, about 20" for the 12" (the 12" is the diameter of the tube) model. At the bottom end of the tube is a concave primary mirror with a hole, about 2" in its centre, this mirror recieves light through the top end and reflects it back to a secondary flat mirror which is held in place in the middle of a clear corrector plate at the top end of the scope tube. From this secondary mirror the light is reflected back towards the hole in the main mirror. It passes through this hole to the eyepiece. It is a GOTO telescope with an inbuilt computer system and hand held contol pad which allows the user to push a few keys telling the scope what you want to see, eg jupiter, saturn, a galaxy... Read review

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Advantages: Light, easy to drink, delicious flavour
Disadvantages: Can be hard to find in shops

...Walking into an off licence these days we are faced with what is often a bewildering array of new drinks all designed to make more pleasurable the ingestion of that old drug, and poison, alcohol. Every year there seems to be an increase in our choice with all manner of outlandish cream or fruit flavoured liqueurs becoming available and wines from countries of which few of us have heard. Sometimes though, if you are lucky, you may chance upon an ancient drink which has been quenching thirst and invigorating soul for many hundreds of years, a drink which has been around for possibly as long as wine and beer. ☼☼☼What is Mead? ☼☼☼ Simply put, mead is just a type of white wine. However, whereas most wine is made from grapes or other fruits, mead is made from honey. The high sugar content of honey... Read review

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Advantages: No fogging
Disadvantages: Only fits limited range of cameras

...What a great idea. And long overdue, too. If you own an F5, 100, 801, 90 - you can replace the standard eyepiece with this little gadget. In wet or cold weather, standing behind the camera , breathing (as you do), the eyepiece doesn't fog up. Simple as that. Not really all that expensive, either, at £18. Piece of cake to install. Just screw off the original eyepiece, and screw this on. You need a soft cloth to clean it, just like the standard one. Damned clever, these Japanese. My only complaint is that it was a bit difficult to track down, until I came across a little mail order outlet in Brighton. They had them in stock, and knew all about them. Used my Switch card, and got it in my hand the next day.... Read review

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Advantages: A superb intriguing plot, a gripping and interesting writing style and well constructed characters.
Disadvantages: Takes priority over food, drink, breathing and other non-essentials.

...So, finally, the time arrives for me to review the first of my holiday books, now that I have recovered and the holiday has become romanticised as part of the distant past. And for the matter I didn’t see the sea at all during my drive/camping family holiday in Germany, Austria and France (we utilised the Channel Tunnel), but the sun played a major part and The Sand s Of Sakkara did to, for it was a most enjoyable read (I get the feeling I wasn’t meant to say that till the end of the opinion). So what were “The Sands Of Sakkara” doing in the middle of Europe? Well, as it pretty obvious really it’s a book (it says so at the top of the page!) by Glenn Meade, an author I had never heard of previously, and neither, apparently, had ciao. Anyway she (at least I think it’s a she although if anybody knows... Read review

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Advantages: Easy to use and good for beginners
Disadvantages: Quite expensive for a decent size

...I've been trained on a 10" LX200 Meade as part of my astrophysics course. It's easy to use and simple to start finding your way around the sky. It's quick to set up after the intitial input of data such as your latitude and longtitude etc. It can be set up with an adapted mechanical camera or with a CCD for the serious amateur. It's a fairly robust telescope and fully motorised. This means you can put in a star's coordinates and hit 'goto' and it will locate the star. It comes with a catalogue containing the coordiantes of many stars, planets and deep sky objects. You simply enter a code for the object and the telescope will locate it. This makes for quick and easy viewing but can take out some of the fun of optical astronomy. It has good resolution, optics and a variety of accessories that come with it, although... Read review

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Advantages: excellent trip for familys or schools
Disadvantages: ?

...It’s a bright sunny day would you like to come with my family and me to Mead open farm/? Mead farm is an open farm at Stanbridge, Leighton Buzzard, and Bedfordshire. www.meadopenfarm.freeserve.co.uk. This farm is a farm with traditional farm animals it is about ½ hr from my home so get in the car we are going to meet my daughter and grandson there. We have arrived and parked our car. We enter into the ticket office it cost us £4.50 for an adult £5.0 for a child if we had senior citizens that would cost £4.00 if we wanted to buy an annual ticket it would cost £26 for adult £22 for a child £24 for the old one. I f I lived in Leighton Buzzard I might be interested in that. We walked past the shop selling toy animals, books and trinkets standard type of things you get in zoo’s / farm’s. There was a tearoom... Read review

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Advantages: Thought-provoking.
Disadvantages: none

...as a much more honest person, who carries a weight of guilt around him, that makes him feel unworthy of being loved. Madeline has also to realise that she is living with only half of her heart, much had died with her son. As the attraction between her and Flynn develops, what will happen to both of them? ? What is the guilt that both carry within them? Can there be any happy ending? This, faithful readers is for you to find out. Summary This is not just a thought-provoking story, many of the chapters which deal with the atrocities of war and the genocide of nations, are real and alive with the journalists who risk their lives to report on these topics. Juilette Mead has done a lot of research into the backgrounds of war correspondents. The novel is an insight into what motivates these brave people; it is not for the money... Read review

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Advantages: Small, lightweight, low cost, ease of use.
Disadvantages: Build quality could be a little better (minor)

...it is doing that, I do the Polar Alignment and levelling of the tripod, so that the mount will track accurately. It takes a little practise, but once you have the hang of the setup it can be done in about 10-15 minutes. * Supplied accessories : A 45 degree erecting prism, and eyepieces including a 10mm and 25mm wide angle, all with 1-1/4" fitting. This is the current standard size for the eyepiece barrel diameter. These will give magnifications of 50x and 20x respectively (work it out by focal length divided by focal length of the eyepiece). Due to my photographic requirements, I changed these for a for a set of 2" eyepieces to get a wider field of view. The supplied eyepieces offer around 50 degrees of vision, my new 2" system offers 80 degrees. I also changed the diagonal from the 45 degree prism to a 2" mirror. The 45 degree prism has one... Read review

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Advantages: cheaper, good value, quality products
Disadvantages: size of garment because of online shopping.

...... Read review

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Advantages: Clarity, choice of lens, colour, brightness and price
Disadvantages: Avoid the zoom eye piece...

... Nikon Fieldscope 82mm ED Angled body Introduction For the uninitiated a Fieldscope is a telescope used for nature spotting and particularly bird watching. Generally sold with zoom type eyepieces and used with a tripod for stability, these will allow you to identify or observe birds at distances beyond the reach of your binoculars. Choices There are two basic body designs - straight and angled. With straight scopes, the barrel and the eyepiece are parallel, while in angled scopes the eyepiece is 45º from the barrel axis so as to bend the light path. Each design has its own pros and cons and the choice of scope boils down to how you want to use it. Pro's & Con's The angled scope makes it easier to share with groups, allows the use of a lower tripod due to the higher eye point, better at observing soaring... Read review

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