I'm sure some dealers wouldn't like hearing that but the reality is that we all would have done this anyway.
What really suprises me is that a lot of people, in another country (which shall remain nameless; in case they get pissed off and bomb us
, although that would be complicated because then we would have to join in and bomb ourselves
) seem to have no idea who the real manufacturer is. This goes for any scope really. After all the Orion 80mm semi-apo is a "clone" of the William Optics scope (ZS80) not the same scope.
Tell me this, who in their right mind would grab a compeditors scope, decide to "clone" it, pull it apart, spend heaps of money reverse engineering it and be able to get it into production within a few months of the original companies release date and with same performance spec's? This would be prohibitively expensive.
The only way it would be possible is to send the scope to china and get them to reverse engineer it (they are clearly the best in the world at this) but in this time frame the chinese would just go to the original manufacturer in Taiwan and buy the scope for cheap with a few different fittings (cheaper), print "Orion" and send it to the U.S.
No major globally successfull company will do this because they will know how to get it cheaper. They will cut the middle man and go straight to Taiwan. The Taiwanese are prefectly capable of printing "Orion" on a scope.
Same with the GSO scopes and Meade. Maybe it's because we are closer to SE Asia that we take more notice of there economies and actually know how they make their money.
Or maybe we as aussies are just so naturally cynical that we never belive any of the advertising...or anyone. Even our mates we know are bulls***ing most of the time.