[Paul Haese]

Hi all,

today I received my 80mm lunt scope from Bintel. The guys at Bintel gave good service once again and helped out immensely with the purchase.

In the first image below you can see the delivered scope. It comes triple boxed with the final box being the hard carry case. Inside the hard case I found the sol searcher, vixen bar, zoom eyepiece and of course the telescope.

Looking at the scope it presents as very robust. It weighs quite a lot and from the etalon to the dew shield (odd thing to have on a solar scope) which also has a screw in objective cap presents as very professionally made.

However where it falls down is the standard focusor. An upgrade is available but the GSO focusor which I found was slightly damaged (see the second imae) and would not turn properly. Bintel to their credit stated they would replace the focusor free of charge. Not to be outdone and being the tinkerer I am I set about fixing the focusor. I stripped down the focusor (see image below) and regreased the bearing race which had next to no grease in it which was why it was binding. When I reassembled the scope it worked perfectly and was very smooth. Something GSO ought to have got right at the factory (which seems to be a common problem with all their focusors).

So now to wait for the clouds to disappear and commence imaging with this new scope.