View Single Post
  #30  
Old 23-07-2018, 11:11 AM
gaseous's Avatar
gaseous (Patrick)
Registered User

gaseous is offline
 
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 785
Hi Aaron,


by and large, yes I'm very happy with it. Only had it to a dark site once since I bought it, but the effort it puts in on DSO's is pretty impressive. Had a few collimation issues which I believe I've sorted, and very bright stars still give spectacular diffraction spikes, but I didn't buy it for looking at very bright stars so I'm not too concerned about that. It's currently poor on planets too (very very bright as you'd expect), but I'm in the process of making an aperture mask - again, not that planets are the main target, and I've still got an 8" for that.



I'm just on 6' and can put it together myself without too many issues. A stepladder is needed for putting the secondary cage on top, and some upper arm/shoulder strength is required, but nothing too onerous. The two base components are probably 30kg each, at a guess, and are a little awkward to get off the ground, but reasonably movable once you've done that providing you're not moving them too far.



Once broken down, it takes up less volume than my old 16", and the circular base is only about 600mm across (as opposed to nearly 900mm on the 16"), so a trolley is a lot smaller too. Not including the time spent on lugging the various pieces all over the place, it can be put together and ready to go in under 30 minutes, with a bit of practice. It's a lot easier to use than the 16" as well, as the narrow base lets you stand next to the eyepiece, rather than having to lean in quite a bit which is a pain in the back. Graeme mentioned some of the quality issues with the fixings which are valid, but overall, it seems to be a very solid and well-built setup.
Reply With Quote