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New Pentax Spotting Scope - is it for real?



Like many of you, I am an ABA member, and always am interested in the "Tools
of the Trade" column in BIRDING; particularly if the column is about optics.

In nearly 35 years of birding, I have looked through quite a few pairs of
binoculars and scopes, and appreciate the comments of Stephen Ingraham, who
currently writes the column in BIRDING.

Two days ago, I checked out Ingraham's web site "Better View Desired"
(http://betterviewdesired.com).  I do this fairly often also.  There was
surprised to find his recent review of the new Pentax 80mm spotting scope.
His report is glowing, to say the least.  Among other zingers, he concludes
that it has "the best overall performance I have seen so far in any spotting
scope with a zoom eyepiece".  He also states that it's qualities "make the
Pentax scope the current Reference Standard, not only for conventional
spotting scopes, but for all scopes".  His use of the words "all scopes"
includes the Televue Ranger, which gives a left-to-right backwards image,
but until recently had been his Reference Standard.

According in Ingraham, the Pentax clearly outperforms the Kowa 824, the 80mm
Swarovski HD, the Leica Televid, the Nikon ED Fieldscope, etc.  Apparently,
the big difference is that Pentax has produced a fine 80mm ED scope body ard
married it to a monstrously big and truly superior eyepiece.  In fact, there
are a series of wonderful Pentax fixed power eyepieces in addition to the
big 20-60X zoom.  It appears that Pentax has made the move to spotting
scopes by using its expertise in producing high quality astronomical
eyepieces.

How much would you have to pay for one of these expensive new toys.
Apparently, a lot less than you would have to pay for the others.  Only
$998, including the eyepiece, according to Eagle Optics.

Why have I not been hearing about this wonderful new scope!  The only ad I
see in BIRDING from Pentax is for their roof-prism binocs, which we all know
are not quite up to the standards set by the top-of-the-line Swarovskis,
Nikons, etc.

Does anyone out there have one of these new Pentax 80mm ED scopes with the
20-60X zoom eyepiece?  I would be interested in hearing about it,
particularly in comparison to some of the other big scopes that are so
popular these days.

John
--
John and Paula Wright     h 252-756-5139

jwright@skantech.net      Greenville, North Carolina