The Cloud Gods relented and gave me a chance to try out the APM SD Apo 140 F7 last night..... in brief:
My background is with Takahashi refractors, I have owned and used everything including the FOA, TOA, TSA, FSQ, FS and FC versions in 60, 76, 100, 102, 106, 120, 128 & 130 apertures.....
I bought the APM for my outreach activities but I expect I will be used more often than that for lunar and planetary views.
The APM SD Apo 140mm F7 is very, very good.... whilst not corrected to the level of the FOA, TSA or TOA, it surprised me with the quality of view it showed. The optics are very sharp, the collimation is excellent, out of focus rings round and concentric. I viewed Jupiter and Saturn as well as a few other targets and found it showed the clouds on Jupiter well and the Cassini Division very sharply.
The available back focus fell a few mm short of the required for my binoviewer system so I will need a Baader 1.25X GPC installed into my Zeiss prism.
The 2.5" focuser is obviously lighter than the 3.7" so the scope is nose heavy, I will be installing a tube counter weight of about 1.5Kg in order to move the balance point back a little.
The focuser itself is very smooth and features a rotator though I tend not to need that function.
I wonder how a pair of these would look with some EMS-UXL bino-backs ???? 