Unitrons

[Ken]

I made my own today drilling and grinding the original and fitting it to a old damaged Tele view diagonal eyepiece holder. I just had a look at Jupiter with it and was impressed by the view. Now all I need is a good quality diagonal and eyepieces and I should have a nice little planetary scope.
Clear skies Ken.

[torana68 (Roger)]

I’m guessing there are a few closet Unitron owners , must be, they keep popping up for sale.

[Wavytone]

Museum pieces IMHO. Lounge-room ornaments, if you have the space. They looked the ducks nuts, but the optical quality was rather variable and I wasn’t prepared to take the risk on a dud after having a previous scope turn out to be disappointing.

The good ones are a testament to why f/15 was (and still is) nirvana for lunar& planetary types, and its a great shame long-focus refractors aren't made anymore.

It’s also a shame Unitron chose to die, rather than embrace several changes and show what could have been:

- modern ED glass types,
- 2” Crayford focussers,
- mounts with modern electric drives on both axes, with auto guider inputs and encoders.

Opportunity long lost.

[UniPol]

Yep, that's exactly what I've done with one of my Unitron 4" pier mounted photo equatorial 132E refractors from the early 1960's. It takes up virtually no floor space at the top of the stairwell. Note that my Unitron is fitted with a Bintel 2" Crayford focusser which was fitted just to try out modern eyepieces. No mods to the tube were needed so the Unitron focusser can be refitted to keep it original. This particular pier model is fitted with a weight driven clock drive much nicer than an electric one.

[torana68 (Roger)]

Nice