DRT

This reminds me of the pictures we looked at a year or so before NH reached Pluto. We kept seeing a blurred potato with a possible twin potato in pixelated images labelled as "the best pictures we have". Jump from there to the close-up images of Pluto and Charon we have now and just imagine what is to come from the next target ?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ultima-in-view-nasa-s-new-horizons-makes-first-detection-of-kuiper-belt-flyby-target Very exciting!

Good to hear, Stu - I thought you were being drawn in by The Dark Side ?

You're not secretly becoming an imager are you, @Stu? '

What is the collective noun for multiple gloats?

I suspect that is absolutely true, Jules. My point is that the problem simply shouldn't happen because the cell should be robust enough to survive the journey and the inevitable knocks without losing alignment. A catastrophic blow can happen to any package, but that is what insurance is for. I totally accept that teething troubles happen to all sorts of products of all standards and prices, but the solution is to fix the source of problem. What we are talking about here is delivery by normal means resulting in a fit for purpose product reaching the customer, which is not rocket science, it's just what should happen. Hopefully that is where this story will end, with customers being able to order a 150ED from any retailer with a high degree of confidence that it will be spot on when it comes out the box.

I agree completely, John.

So the price should rise and the scope should be fit for purpose.

I have mixed feelings about this. In the circumstances I think FLO are taking appropriate steps to ensure their customers have a better chance of receiving a fit for purpose scope at the first attempt. I can only assume that the margins on these scopes is tight, thereby resulting in the cost of the additional check having to be passed on to the customer. However, I can't help feeling that a precision instrument that costs £1,569 should be expected to work first time out of the box without the customer having to rely on a retailers taking on additional packaging and QA steps and a customer having to pay an additional £80 to compensate for the manufacturer's shortcomings. Just to be clear, tis is in no way a criticism of FLO. You are doing what you can. But this should be entirely SkyWatcher's issue to resolve.

Thanks for taking the time to post that, John. Pleasing to see there are no negative comments in this part of your review, which backs up the general feeling that this can be a fantastic scope at the price once these initial problems with the lens cell and packaging are resolved ?

No problem, Jules - I hope your back improves soon.

Whatever I said that caused offence was not intended, but for the life of me I cannot work out what it was.

Great reports, Chris, and very pleasing to hear what this scope can deliver.

Does it really matter which of those things caused the problem, Jules? Either of those things should have been caught and fixed by the QA process.

I do think this will prove to be true in the long term, Steve, but the quality control problem with the second scope was nothing to do with packaging and needs to be addressed at source, not by retailers or customers. That scope should never have left the factory in that condition and if more turn up with the same or similar problems the reputation of this game-changing scope could be irreparably damaged.

Wow! According to this inflation calculator that is the equivalent of £8,507 in today's money

I'm Scottish and have never seen nor tasted a deep fried Mars bar in my life. I did meet Welsh twins once, but that's for a different forum ?

Are Es Reid, Edgar Hoover and James Dyson all Welsh? Who knew!

This is my greatest irritation with this type of problem, and why I am not inclined to support the "send it to Es Reid" solution. These scopes cost a lot of money. Not as much as some others, but still a lot of money. They should leave the factory fit for purpose and should not require a retailer or a third party or the customer to check and correct things that should just work as designed. The next time you buy a Hoover, would you be prepared to send it to and pay Mr Dyson (or anyone else) to check that it was working to specification? ?

Without wanting to cast doubt on the work of Es Reid and others like him, I do think this is a very real problem. If FLO send an ordered scope to Es to have the alignment checked, and perhaps tweaked to make it perfect, that scope then goes back in a box and potentially gets chucked around a few vans and warehouses before reaching the customer. Even if handled carefully (in courier terminology) I doubt very much that everything will be as it was when it left Es Reid's hands by the time it arrives at the customer's address, particularly if the lens is held in a relatively inexpensive cell. I think if I wanted to pay for someone like Es to optimise the alignment of some expensive optics I would then want to be in complete control of the onward transport to wherever I wanted the scope to live. DHL, DPD and their kin are very efficient at getting big boxes from A to B quickly, but they do not do it with kid gloves ?

Well said, Alan - great to see this happening in real time and credit to FLO and John for sharing the information so openly.

If only that were true ?

Maybe you should put it back on tilted and see if it compensates for the misaligned retaining ring? Just to be clear - this is a joke!!!

This has just reminded me of a similar experience with my SW ED120 - caused by me but as a result of something I suspect the ED120 and the ED150 will have in common. A couple of years ago I unscrewed the lens cell of my ED120 in order to clean some paint flakes off the inside surface of the objective. After screwing the lens cell back on I did a similar test to that described by @John and the pattern I saw was identical to the sketch in the above post with two completely separate circles. I removed the cell again and re-fitted it. The next test showed two concentric circles in perfect alignment. The problem had been caused by me screwing the objective cell onto the OTA with the threads crossed so the objective was tilted to one side. Neither thread was damaged and it was a simple task to refit the cell with the threads properly engaged and the lens in the correct alignment. My conclusion was that the tolerances used in the manufacture of the OTA and the cell are relatively coarse, thereby allowing this mis-alignment to occur. Tighter tolerances of highly accurately machined threads would have prevented me from screwing the cell onto the OTA with the threads misaligned, or would have caused me to use so much force that the threads would have been damaged. I suspect the threads on the lens cell and its retaining ring are machined to a similarly slack tolerance to those on my ED120. A compromise in the manufacturing process when trying to keep cost down?

I've just read this whole thread from start to finish for the first time. What a disappointing outcome! Whilst the first issue is entirely understandable given what we all know sometimes happens to big boxes handled by couriers, the issue with the second scope is just shoddy QC that simply should not happen. No one would need to do a star test to see that the ring hasn't been inserted correctly, including the person who put the two blobs of cement on it. That lens cell should never have left the factory in that state. With all due respect to Es Reid, a junior member of staff at any reputable astro retailer could be trusted to remove the dew shield and look for this problem before any of these scopes are shipped. Let's hope Synta get their act together soon. The silver lining on all of this is John's report on the control of CA and the performance of the focuser on the first scope, both of which are very encouraging if the other problems can be fixed.