I bought this scope approximately a year ago as a toe in the water for imaging at a fairly wide scale, and having decided I liked it I bought a higher class refractor to replace it, relegating it to use as a guidescope first, and now to it's box as my new OAG arrived.
Full discolsure, there are a couple of internal smudges on the objective. If heavily dewed up (Which happened to me when my heater controller failed) it is possible for these scopes to draw moisture in between objective elements and that happened to this one. I did not notice anything until I shot flat frames and they looked weird. Given the value of the scope I carefully disassembled and cleaned/dried it using isopropanol and distilled water, but a couple of smudges remain, visible in the photos. I could not see any performance change as a result but have set the price accordingly.
Also with the scope is an extended dovetail bar and the reducer/corrector for the 80mm version, which Skywatcher sell (With an adapter) as the one for this scope. The adapter was not available when I bought this so I had one made which is internally threaded to accept a 2" filter cell, where I had a UV-IR cut filter for imaging which improves the quality markedly for imaging and cut reflection issues my ASI294 camera is prone to. Lack of he filter had no effect on it as a guider.
These scopes are NOT an Apochromat, Achromat at best but it was still a good toe in the water and made a very effective guider until my OAG arrived.
The scope is currently $599 on the Bintel site and the reducer/Corrector $449 (I assume that includes the adapter for the ED72 drawtube)
I am looking for $700 including post within Australia for the three items, and not looking to separate them. The scope is located in kilmore, Vic at the moment.
Astrobin links to some images I shot with this scope.
https://www.astrobin.com/full/418336/0/
https://www.astrobin.com/full/fvqi6n/B/
https://www.astrobin.com/full/xfe2x7/B/
