Which one of these three would you choose...

[MartinB]

Regarding place of manufacture - my impression of Chinese manufacturing is that you give them the spec and they deliver.

A number of high performance, high prestige, high cost sail makers were recently embarrased when it was revealed that most of their sails were now being made in China. There was absolutely no question of their being inferior to those made in European lofts.

At a given price point "Made in China" is probably more of a guarantee of consistency than made in Japan, UK, Germany or just about anywhere else.

The limitation on Chinese manufacture isn't quality but volume and guaranteed production runs. They don't do bespoke.

[FLO]

Good post Martin! Spot-on!

[ollypenrice]

Steve is in a position to know more about the quality control of the various models than I am but from what I read on the web the Meade 127 seems consistent. Mine's far better than I expected and pulls down good fine detail. Your choices do have very different focal lengths, which is an issue regarding choice of target. The 127 gets you into galaxy country, though only just at 950mm.

Here's a typical Meade 127 result. No flattener, Atik 16HR HaLRGB.

Olly