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Aaron,
I am somewhat surprised !!! The Widescans whilst an expensive eyepiece are not at their best in fast scopes of F5 focal ratio like your TV Genesis. They are based on a modified Erfle design and really are at their best in scopes of F9 and slower, like SCT's, MCT's or slow, long focus achomats. In a slow scope they work well, in a fast scope they leave something to be desired IMO. The Orion Ultrascopic on the other hand should be an outstanding performer optically in your scope. These work well at F5 and image quality is as good as any premium eyepiece from Televue and Pentax. The downside with the Orion Ultrascopic should be its short eye-relief and narrow field of view not the optical quality of the images it provides.
You say the issues with the Ultrascopic are optical, if that is the case I think you have
a faulty eyepiece or something is wrong with the telescope.
The 5mm eyepiece gives 100X in your scope and the Genesis should easily be able to go way past that, when conditions are favourable. Do you have any observing colleagues that can "lend" you a 5mm eyepiece of known high quality to compare the images with your own ? This is the least likely cause.
What has possibly happened is that over the years with constant transportation the scope has been knocked out of collimation !! You can test this yourself. Using your 5mm eyepiece, better stilll a borrowed one of 5mm to 8mm focal length, if you can get it in case the eyepiece also has issues, defocus on a bright star. The defocused pattern should appear perfectly circular and evenly illuminated, if it doesn't the scope is out of collimation and this will be causing the images in your 5mm eyepiece at 100X to appear poor.
This needs to be addressed before you consider buying another eyepiece, because the 5mm Ultrascopic used native or in conjunction with the 2X shorty plus barlow should give 1st class images, notwithstanding the short eye-relief and narrow FOV.
Check the scopes collimation, if its out come back to me either on list or with a PM and I will tell you where to send it to get it fixed. Unfortunately its not a DIY project unless you have experience in collimating a refractor.
CS-John B
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