16 GSO Dobsonian.
What’s good.
Images are excellent when better quality eyepieces are used.
The focuser is smooth and works well.
The friction systems work well.(read below)
Not so good.
The secondary mirror was nowhere near aligned with the focuser. Required more than normal collimation.
RA friction device had been lubricated by poor assembly practice. It needed to be dissembled and cleaned to work correctly.
During manufacture, the finder bracket was positioned to make alignment impossible. The holes were enlarged slightly and the bracket refitted to permit alignment.
There is a gap between the focuser and the upper cage as the radii are mismatched. There is no adverse consequence, it’s just ugly.
Weight, it is just over 30 kg per piece for the base & lower tube. The weight of 60 plus kg and the awkward shape make moving the telescope as an assembled unit extremely difficult.
No instructions or parts count.
It came with 4 eyepieces, I've only used the 2" 30mm on the moon where it gave false colour, however the image was otherwise acceptable.
The terrible bits.
The entire base assembly is chip board. Chipboard is heavy and unsuitable for this application, telescopes get wet. After a week of observations the base is showing signs of degradation due to condensation.
All edges are raw chipboard, there is nothing to prevent the absorption of water. Before assembly of the base all edges require sealing with paint to prevent moisture entering. That is if you keep the base.
My Summary.
The images make it worth keeping.
The base is junk, no telescope should have unsealed edges or a chip board base because of exposure to moist observing conditions. It’s not just GSO, many others use chipboard.
Base pieces make great templates, so you can use a router to cut a ply base. A ply base will need to be painted on all surfaces. It will be lighter, additional cutouts would further reduce weight.
