“The Beast”

In June, while on a trip to Arizona I made the mistake of stopping at Stellar vision. It is like a telescope and accessory mall with a very knowledgeable owner, Frank Lopez. I was looking around and asked Frank “Do you have any Meade LXD-750’s?” “Sure” he said, I have 2 and a couple of 650’s and 600’s as well. Wow, he really had a collection. I recognized right off that the 750 was going to be to big for me to handle or even fit the tripod in my car. It is massive.

So I settled on a LXD-650. After getting it into my overstuffed car I headed home with my treasure. To make a long story short I kind of toasted the 18 volt electronics somehow. Back it went to the shop by mail and it was replaced by an LXD-600. the only difference is a 650 is 18 volts and the 600 is 12 volts. This mount was made around the early 90’s so is a bit outdated.

I bought the mount to handle my Celestron 6″ achromatic refractor. It does this very well. Tracks ok and even pulse guides. Just recently added a 60 mm guide-scope to the 6″ and will give that a shot the next clear night.

The bar that the guide scope is mounted on was made from iron stock and a drill press.

I really like the 6″ refractor. It has done some outstanding work on planets and deep sky objects. All it needed was a solid mount. It has found it in the LXD-600!