Quote:
Originally Posted by UniPol
Like John, I bought my first Unitron 4" back in 1969 from Eric Witcombe when it was then known as The Amateur Astronomers Supply Co. which it truly was. It is hard to describe the feeling one had entering the little shop at 11a-11b Clarke St in Crows Nest all those years ago, a certain smell and the great display of brand new Unitrons, Newtonians and an assortment of Royal's, books, weather stations and other astronomical accessories. Monte Ash bought the business and changed the name to Astro Optical Supplies perhaps in the late seventies or the early 1980's (I can't quite recall) and carried on the tradition Eric set by having lots of spare parts and accessories for the Unitrons and home built Newtonians. I can't recall when Monte sold out but things changed in the amateur astro world when SCT's became the fashion and Unitrons priced themselves out of the market around the mid 1980's onwards. Of course there was competition in the late 1980's and particularly the 1990's from York Optical and Bintel. It was a bit of a merry go round in those days; Bintel sold Celestron's, Astro Optical sold Meade's, York sold anything, Meade sold Meade's, Bintel went to Meade's, Astro Optical went Celestron's then back to Meade, all very confusing. Please forgive me if my dates, brands and who sold what aren't quite right, my memory is fading somewhat but not a real bother.
Apparently, and only heresay, is that a lot of optical and mirror making gear was literally thrown out after Monte sold the business or at least over the years. I also heard that a lot of brand new Polarex/Unitron parts and accessories were also thrown away because the people running the business didn't know what they were or belonged to. I managed to score a Unitron Super Unihex, a couple of synchronous electric drives and other sacred parts just by chance some years ago when Astro Optical had a clean out (one of many as I believe they must have had a few sheds around the back lanes of Crows Nest full of stuff). Again, not substantiated but one hears quite a few stories over the years. In the case of the Super Unihex, the salesman said that they kept it because it looked too good to throw out and that's a fact. I paid the original price marked on the box which was from the the late 1960's and still wasn't that cheap !
My memories will mostly be with "The Amateur Astronomy Supply Co." instead of the last incarnation of "Astro Optical" mainly because of the sameness of products sold by the current crop of astro vendors.
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The Above review has some wrong information. Astro-Optical have never sold Meade Telescopes, and were in fact the original distributors of Celestron telescopes in Australia, when Eric Witcombe was the owner of the company.