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I had a Vixen R200S for a while.
A quick review for you. I was fairly new to astroimaging and was using a modified DSLR. I had had a Meade LX90 and an Orion ED80.
The Vixen was put on a Vixen Sphinx mount (a crappy mount despite being expensive).
Firstly, quality. I would not describe Vixen as high quality but more a mass producer of reasonable quality at a more affordable price. The focuser was
poor (it had a screw fitting to attach the DSLR which when screwed on ended up at whatever orientation the threads dictated so the camera would be at an odd angle obviously unsatisfactory for framing the image).
The focuser had cheap ugly plastic knobs. The mirror collimation screws were push/pull and it was extremely hard to collimate. I got an Antares laser for collimation and that made it simpler. Trying to do it without that was mission impossible. That's not Vixen's fault as any fast newt will be hard. The rule being the faster the scope the harder the collimation.
It has an extremely wide field of view so unless you are planning to use a tiny chipped camera it is really a very wide field setup with a DSLR. So be aware of that.
Other than that the mirrors seemed fine (newtonian mirrors are easy to make and this means they can be made to a high accuracy more easily than other types).
If I had one again I would;
1. chuck the crappy Vixen focuser (the plastic knobs were "Tasco-like".)
I believe a nice Moonlite focuser will fit.
2. I would use the Baader MPCC corrector as I have seen that works well. The Vixen one as I recall is designed to fit in their focuser so it may not fit other setups. Not sure about the quality of the Vixen corrector - it was OK from memory although I think it still left a bit of coma at the corners - can't say for sure though).
So the Vixen is not a scope that works right out of the box either.
The finder scope had a nice feature with the adjustment screws being spring loaded which meant it was really easy to adjust it.
My overall opinion of Vixen after using 2 of their products and their attitude towards their market and their practices is quite low. For example the Sphinx was a bugged mount which they started selling without autoguiding ability and they took over a year to release the autoguiding feature and when they did they wanted more money for it. It also did not work well.
The mount needed modification to work properly and the Starbook is very hard to use and not user friendly and is super bright at night. Basically a bug atttractor in summer.
Have you considered making your own Newt? There are lots of suppliers for this type of scope and you could put together an awesome system with known quality for possibly similar money??
I'd also consider F5 as I have a few instruments that do F5 and I think its a great F ratio for astroimaging. Fast yet not overly fussy for collimation etc.
F4 requires a lot of things to be made well - mirror holder,focuser, tube strength, even tube expansion whilst imaging with a temperature drop.
I doubt the Vixen has this nor the GSO.
Greg.
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