[RickS (Rick)]

I just managed to get the sensor in an Apogee U16M replaced under warranty. I bought the camera secondhand but only a few months old and basically unused. I checked with Apogee that they would honour the warranty before I bought it and they said they would. And indeed they did, asking me to send the camera back once I demonstrated that the sensor performance was not within spec. So, kudos to Apogee and especially their sales manager, Tim Puckett, who was very helpful.

The thing I learned during this process, however, was that some (all?) camera manufacturers don't provide any warranty on the sensor itself. That is provided by the sensor manufacturer - Truesense Imaging, Inc. (previously Kodak) in this case. The warranty on the sensor may be shorter than the warranty on the camera itself and it starts when the sensor is shipped by the manufacturer. In my case, a camera that had only been in Australia for a few months had just a few days left on the sensor warranty. I got it back to Apogee just in time!

The other thing I learned is that this process can be slow. I returned the camera in early October and it just arrived back today. The bulk of the time was waiting for Truesense to evaluate the sensor and provide a replacement.

Hope this info may be useful to others. Make sure you check out the sensor on a new camera carefully and do it ASAP.

I love the camera, BTW. It's obviously built to a very high quality standard and the cooling is amazing, albeit slow. I can get to 60C below ambient no trouble at all. The filter wheel is very precise and solid with no flex at all. I'm really looking forward to getting it out under some dark skies on my FSQ-106ED and AG12.

Cheers,
Rick.