Yes you are absolutely right! Here is a photo:
http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/138569622/large
With the 110FL its all about the lens. Fluorite triplet oil spaced TEC style.
I already own a TEC180 and it has a beautiful lens. I am partial to triplet style lenses.
I have also owned 2 FSQ106's and they are the professional standard widefield imaging machines.
They are not that dissimilar in some ways. TEC is F5.6 and FSQ is F5 plus has a reducer which works well giving F3.6.
I would rate the FSQ focuser as better than the TEC. The FSQ106ED I had showed none of the flex that some FSQ owners complain of with heavy loadings. I used an Apogee U16M with zero flex and a FLI PL16803 with virtually no flex (I think there is some minor flex between the Proline and its filterwheel which has been fixed in later models of the 5/7 filter wheel).
The TEC focuser is very smooth and handles a Microline camera fine which is within its rated loadings. It does not handle the Proline although I worked out a solution which was to support the drawtube with a Losmandy padded guide ring. That works quite well.
I would give the edge in the lens department to the TEC. In a recent test by Percy Muir he rated the TEC lens the best he's ever handled.
One thing I did notice is that it snaps to focus more perfectly than any other lens I have used. The FSQ also snaps to focus and is easy to focus.
Basically we are talking about 2 fabulous scopes here.
I like the antireflection coatings on the TEC a bit better but that is just subjective. Both have excellent colour correction.
The TEC is quite a bit lighter. The FSQ is built very solidly for a small scope which means everything is beefy.
The FSQ focus lock mechanism is poor and is best not used and a Robofocus used instead. The TEC focus lock mechanism is quite clever and consists of adjusting the tension on a circular washer behind the microfocuser knob which has a raised inner knob which can be turned to adjust tension. It works very well.
I personally feel the drawtubes for either scope should be stainless steel like AP uses rather than aluminium tube.
I am not a fan of TEC rings or the clamshell. They seem to very easily damage the OTA with their design. I would allow for buying replacement rings whereas the FSQ clamshell works beautifully and I used to use that all the time with no flexure and easy to use and adjust the scopes balance. But it is an extra to the scope and not cheap.
The TEC has a nice case and came with extras like DSLR adapter, starbeam finderscope (an extra). It also has a nice eyepiece holder plug.
The clamshell has a handle on it which is useful. The scope is quite light and I set it up recently on a lightweight Manfrotto camera tripod that I would never mount the FSQ on.
Fit and finish are similar on both. The TEC clamshell looks good but is really more suitable for visual than imaging although I suppose it may be OK. I have custom rings that are quite strong although awkward to connect.
Percy did a test on both TEC110 and FSQ for colour correctness. It consisted of seeing how the scope projected different colours RGB and measuring their levels to see if they handled each the same. The TEC was perfect with the lens out off the body and slightly skewed to one colour in the tube - green. The FSQ was slightly off on 2 colours.
Then he put flocking on the inside of both scopes tubes. The colour became perfect with both.
It turns out the paint used to coat the inside of scopes can affect colour fidelity.Some black paint have a definite green hue.
I did not notice any green bias to the TEC in the few images I have taken so far. In fact I found the colours to be more vibrant than normal and the images more alive than I expected. Star colours were better than normal.
So the TEC110 is all about the lens in my opinion. Both scopes are awesome. The FSQ has the great reducer, stronger focuser, a flatter field which would be handy for mosaics.
If you wanted to image with a heavy image train unless you know the FSQ has a good focuser like my one was then per posts on the net it sounds risky. But then the TEC doesn't handle the weight either without a work around. So they are equal in that regard or in my case I would give the edge to the FSQ.
FSQ has a captains wheel to rotate the focuser which is unnecessary with the camera angle rotator (an extra depending on which model you got). I also had the dovetail fittings which I like as they give a positive mount and they can also rotate very easily. So the captains wheel is not that useful. The TEC has a collet style ring that allows the focuser to rotate. In the few times I have used it I was unable to tighten it with the scope mounted tight enough to have no flex with my heavy camera.
I had to have it on a towel and tighten it so no flex with the joint with the tube. In comparison my AP140 has a collet and it is easy to tighten and have no flex. Same with TEC180. Perhaps thats a size thing.
But if you were imaging with a lighter imaging train it comes down to a preference. At this stage I would prefer the triplet and its characteristics but it has a hard act to live up as the FSQ was a reliable workhorse that makes excellent images very easy to take.
Sorry if I can't state one is the better than the other because I am not sure either is a clearly better than the other. Its pretty close and comes down to what type of imaging you intend to make. FSQ would be better for mosaics and has a slightly wider field plus the known reducer (actually 2 are available now). The TEC does not have a reducer available although the APM one may work (to be proven). But it makes vibrant images that seem to have better than average colour from the same equipment.
I love em both. To make it worse they are also similar prices.
A fluorite triplet is likely to become a classic though much like the AP traveller.
Yuri's team are exceptionally good at making optics. You won't find anyone complaining about a TEC scope or its optics. I have never seen anything other than high praise.
The TEC will hold its resale value well. I have never seen a TEC scope ever sell for less than about 90% of original purchase price. The 110 even more so as there are currently only 50 of them.
If you use reducer on the FSQ there is an exact distance for the CCD.
No matter which one you use you will need some adapter to connect to your camera so the distance from the flattener is not really an issue.
The TEC flattener works well by the way except that it adds weight to the drawtube quite a distance out and reduces the payload the focuser can handle. If your chip is small enough the flattener would not be needed. I am not sure what that size is - probably a bit smaller than the KAF8300. KAF8300 may just squeak it in but I'd have to test.
Greg.
