I realized recently that I’ve been a Meade LXD55 Schmidt-Newtonian telescope owner for just shy of two decades now. Wow! “That’s hard to believe,” I thought. It got me to thinking about the telescope, and it dawned on me to write about the LXD55 scope & mount.
Meade’s LXD55 line of scopes, and maybe more importantly, the GOTO German equatorial mount (GEM) was all the talk back in late 2001 and 2002 when the company began advertising it in the usual magazines. However, Meade had an issue getting the units to market and in the hands of eager amateurs chomping at the bit to have a GOTO mount that wasn’t going to break the bank.
I’m not entirely sure why the promised release date was pushed back. Maybe it was manufacturing delays or there was something else afoot but only a smattering of scopes and mounts were initially released. What I painfully knew at that time was my order had not been filled and the delivery date kept getting pushed back. If I recall correctly, (this was 20 years ago) I think I ended up waiting an additional 6 agonizing months before my shiny new telescope finally shipped. Receiving the scope was another tragic story entirely which you can read about here.