[doug mc]

Just bought one of these from Bintel. Having just moved into a townhouse, carrying the 8 inch classic cassegrain up and down the stairs is proving to be a bit of task. This particular scope is advertised as set up for visual use. It requires a 35mm extension to enable focus with eyepieces. This provides extra back focus for binoviewing, which i do a lot of nowadays. I was able to reach focus with the1.6x William Optics OCA with about 10mm to spare. I have a Siebert 1.25x OCA which can be used in a 3.5x configuration. Using that OCA gives me 25mm to spare. Once collimated and cooled it gave a good star test and Jupiter showed impressive details. The mirror cell is not the same design as their dobs. To remove the mirror, you unwind the main collimation nuts and take out the mirror plate. Do not try to remove the cell like their bigger newtonians, the outer cell is held in place with nuts on the inside. I did the usual job of readjusting the mirror clips to relieve the extra tension they normally come with for shipping. The vixen bar is a much longer one than displayed in advertising. It's a pretty red color. The mirror cell has a central opening of about 80mm, but is otherwise closed off. I have ordered a pc fan to assist cooling. The single speed crayford focusor is a big plus, particularly for the weight of the binoviewer. All in all i am very happy with this scope. So much lighter and satisfying performance.