Telescope Reviews: Sears 80mm vs. Jason 60mm

I took my Sears 80mm, my Jason 60mm, and my Meade 102mm refractors out last night for some comparisons. The sky was crystal clear, the Moon was bright, there was no wind, and the atmosphere seemed pretty stable - a perfect night for some comparisons!

Here are the objects viewed and my results, using my Zhumell 8-24mm zoom eyepiece, with a Hardin Optical Moon filter for lunar viewing:

1. Jupiter - sharper by a hair in the Jason. Both the Jason and the Sears provided much better views of Jupiter than the Meade did with no detectable CA - the Meade had oodles of it.
2. The Perseus Double Cluster - a small, but noticeable amount sharper in the Jason as compared to the Sears, which showed just a handful more stars than the Jason. At low powers below about ~50x, the Meade showed a much better view with numerous additional stars.
3. The Orion Nebula and the Trapezium - at high powers over 50x, the best overall resolution was in the Jason - the Sears scope just seemed kind of "fuzzy" on the Trapezium above ~100x. The Meade, of course, showed a lot more nebulosity than the other two.
4. The Moon - the eyeball burner, even with the filter - Couldn't tell any noticeable difference between the Jason and Sears, even with a barlow at powers of ~200x. The Meade gets eaten for lunch here, with a lot of fuzziness appearing after ~120x.

The measured FOVs of these scopes, using a Zhumell 32mm eyepiece (with ~50° AFOV), are:
Jason 60mm - 1.25°
Sears 80mm - 0.97°
Meade 102mm - 1.78°

Now some observations on general usage of these scopes:
1. The Jason and Sears have much better mounts/tripods than the newer Meade, both in construction and quality.
2. The Jason mount seems to vibrate/oscillate the least amount after making an adjustment. The Meade is the worst of the lot.
3. The Sears is by far the heaviest, and is hard to get out the door with one hand. The Jason and Meade are about tied in the "one handed get it out the door" category.
4. The finder on the Sears is superior to the Jason finder in my opinion - it is brighter and you don't have to flip it into place to use it, thus eliminating the possibility of inadvertently repositioning the scope when going from finder mode to scope mode.
5. The Jason focuser is much better and smoother than the other two, even when cleaned and lubed properly.
6. The Jason seems to have a larger focus "band" - it seems you can crank the focuser more without losing focus.

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Shane
Binos: Apogee 25x100 / Burgess Optical 25x100 / Pentax 20x60 PCF WP / Tasco InFocus 10x50
Tripods: Sunpak PlatinumPlus Ultra 7500TM / Quickset Samson
Refractors: Meade DS-2102AT-TC 102mm f/7.8; Sears Discoverer 3 (4454) 80mm f/15; Jason 313 Discoverer 60mm f/15.2
Reflectors (Dob): Hardin Optical DSH10 10" f/5
EP's: Zoom: Zhumell 8-24mm & Circle K 7.5-22.5mm 0.965"; 9-52mm Plössls; Zhumell 2x barlow
Kodak Z760; Orion SteadyPix camera mount; Orion LaserMate Deluxe Collimator