I hate to put you on the offensive but maybe you should have bought a fat Physics apo in the first place. Meade makes their products for the masses not the few. I have owned several scopes in the last 40 years, and I will say that Meade does not make the best scope out there, but it is the best scope you can buy for your money, unless you are rolling in dough.

I won't say that meade's scopes will perform out of the box as they claim because as I can tell, most of the lower end meades will not. They need some tweeking. With a litte work they function just fine.

I plan on buying a lx200r 10 " and sending it off to Dr. Sherrod to super charge. He worked on my etx 125 and it works great. It's too bad that the meade scopes are not up to your standards. If you want perfection, spend the big bucks.