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An update finally
I ended up ordering this scope through AliExpress on 11/11/19 with some reservations. United Optics could not supply at the time & the AliExpress seller was offering an attractive discount. The whole experience was a disaster I'm sorry to say. The seller failed to state there was a two month wait for the item & marked it as dispatched regardless, then cancelled the shipping a fortnight later without notifying me. It was AliExpress admin who drew my attention to this (to their credit). Eventually I got a response from the seller after numerous attempts stating rather bluntly "you must wait for supply" & I certainly did. I finally received the scope on 1/1/20, yes, new years day. Initial inspection of the scope revealed a number of dust particles 'suspended' inside the tube, some quite large along with a hazy look on the inside of the rear element with numerous sleeks apparent. Not what you want to see in a new telescope. I decided to reserve my judgement until I'd tested it under the stars. The first week of January was mostly clear with good seeing at my locale, (in fact it's been crap ever since) so I was able put it through its paces. The results? Dreadful I'm afraid, significant Coma was present across the whole field of view. So, decision made , it had to be returned which was a great pity as I had high hopes for this little scope. The fit & finish was impressive but it was clearly a bad sample which has been the case for many of its re-branded brethren. As I understand it these scopes which are made by United Optics are re-branded & sold as William Optics Star 71, TS Optics Quad 71 both of which are a tweaked variant which puts the aperture at 71mm instead of 70mm, the Tecnosky 70AG & the Meade series 6000 Astrograph 70, the Meade variant seems to have been least affected by optical issues but at almost twice the price of the Sky Rover it's easy to see why I went with the native branding. So it seems as though it's a bit of a lottery with these little quads as far as quality control is concerned, which is sad because good samples of these scopes produce excellent results. The other major player in Chinese optics is Sharp Star & it seems they have the edge in QC. I ended up having to lodge a dispute through AliExpress to secure a refund due to the total lack of communication & customer service by the particular seller. My dispute was upheld by AliExpress I'm pleased to say & I'm due to see the money in my account any day now (four & a half Mths after the purchase). So in view of my experience, in future I would only buy an Instrument with this type of "extreme" optics (F5 or faster) from a retail specialist who bench tests each unit prior to sale. Thankfully there is now such a retailer in Sydney, Adriano Massatani at TESTAR , & I will be placing an order with him for the Sharp Star 76 EDPH. I hope this rather long winded follow up was worth the read. & some pics just to prove it all happened.
Clear skies,
Tony
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