[Paul Haese]

Monday I took delivery of a GSO Truss Newtonian through Bintel. I thought it might be worth advising people what I thought of my initial impressions.

First up, the price is very good for what you are getting and the delivery was very prompt.

Next the box for this thing is huge. I could just get it through our front door. The telescope is well supported by polystyrene packing and the box is two thicknesses of cardboard. See the photo

Whilst the scope is large it is easy to lift. In fact it is easier to lift than the 12" RC that GSO make. The build quality looks great. Everything is well machined and put together nicely. The back supporting plate is one piece and appears to be quite rigid. It has three fans which are placed 120 degrees apart. The primary is a conical mirror which will aid cooling. It appears to be adhered to the back plate. Collimation is done via three sets of screws with one moving the assembly and the other acting as the locking screw.

The back focus is about 180mm from the plate which supports the focusor (ignoring the focusor will aid in getting adapters sorted if you intend to use an Atlas). That plate seems to hold the focusor really well and helps stabilise the secondary assembly. The secondary assembly seems quite rigid with supporting poles inside the secondary cage. It will be interesting to see if it supports my STXL sometime in the future.

After some collimation I took an image of a water tower 5 km away from our home across the valley whilst the scope was sitting on a bench. The resolution is pretty reasonable I think, of course star testing and imaging will confirm my thoughts on the matter. See photo.

One thing I have noticed though is that the truss needs a shroud as light can be seen entering into the focusor from bottom of the secondary assembly. It's not a big problem and it can be alleviated really quickly.

Another thing GSO could do to improve this scope would be to install a secondary heater. I would expect the secondary will dew up quickly without a dew heater. Kendrick make a dew heater which I am expecting delivery of in next day or so which will sort that problem.

Those minor things aside I am expecting this scope to be as good as their RC's. Bang for buck is going to be high and I am looking forward to imaging with it. It will be a light bucket compared to RC and I am hoping it will perform every bit as good as that scope.