Meade 16mm SWA EP.

[ollypenrice]

I've never had one of these before but when I saw one come up on here at a fair price I bought it. They seem no longer to be available but look something like this; http://www.telescopes.com/telescope-eyepieces/125-inch-eyepieces/meadesuperwideangleeyepiece125inch.cfm Thanks to Great_Bear for sending it in pristine condition and well protected.

Optically it seems first class, a premium eyepiece. I gave it a run in the TEC140 and had literally pinpoint stars edge to edge. The FOV is large enough to mean moving your head to reach the field stop, which is how I like it! (Sticking your head out of the spaceship window .)

The twist up eye relief guide is fine but I'm not so keen on the flat top of the eye 'cup' because it isn't a cup at all and I feel it should be. Perhaps it's aimed at spectacle wearers but I found stray light coming in from the sides a distraction. There's snow on the ground at the moment making this worse. I'd rather have a fold down rubber lip as on TeleVues.

But it's a very nice EP and will get lots of use. I like it and the long eye relief is important for me because I need it to be friendly for all users.

Olly

[cs1cjc]

Nice report!

The ES 68 16mm has (I understand) similar optics. I find it to be every sharp and it has the fold up eye cup that you want however the eye lens is sunk quite low in the housing, which reduces glare problems, but leaves a bit short on eye relief for me. I can just use about use it with glasses at night but it is marginal. It has a very flat field which (like the 24mm) is sharp from edge to edge. It is also so dinky and light in weight - definitely my preferred sort of engineering!

[andrew63]

Yes i would agree, they are a great set - i've used the 16, 20, 24 and 34 found them to be sharp and well corrected. It makes you wonder why meade would discontinue such a good set?

andrew

[alan potts]

Why Meade discontinued these is a good question Andrew. I am sure there was a big time falling out wrapped up in this somewhere. They discontinued most of the UWA range too. The 5.5mm 8.8mm and 14mm are not the same as the ones before. The 24mm and 30mm still on sale are old stock in my books.

Don't forget the S Plossl range went to, this is now in the Bresser camp along with the telextenders.

Back to the question, yes very nice range of EP's, I moved on to wider fields and emptier pockets.

Happy New Year,

Alan.