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I missed this thread a few years back when it started, so it's good to see it revived. I also have a lot of memories of AOS, starting in the 60's when it was the Amateur Astronomers Supply Company. My first visits were before Eric Witcombe took it over. The original guy, whose name I no longer remember, was a nice guy but apparently had problems with keeping the business side turning over. He disappeared, was the impression I was given, when I visited the shop one day and the people who I had the impression were the receivers were there.
I first used the place to buy some Ortho eyepieces and a better finder for my first telescope, these were Polarex/Unitron items. And a big improvement on the Huygens eyepieces that had come with the 6-inch reflector I'd bought second hand. The finder, 40mm, was likewise a big step up from the 20mm or so brass spyglass that the scope had.
Later years, Eric ran the place, then Monty. Monty had a good technician, who generally did seem to know how to test scopes, how to fix things, and when he'd reached his limits. That was in the 80's.
I bought a few Newtonians there over the years, including a 10-inch f/6 on an Astro-optical mount that had good mirrors and was a very nice deep-sky instrument. That was in the early 80's. It was one of quite a few telescopes I bought there over the decades, a more recent one being a Celestron 9 1/4 SCT , one of the new versions with XLT coatings, in 2004. A good scope, except for the barely adequate diagonal that Celestron supplied, that I soon replaced.
I'm not too surprised that they went out of business eventually, because as mentioned already their web site was not helpful, with its price categories and patchy information. Not an encouraging interface to the outside world. And that makes a big difference with an online world.
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