Louis D

Be willing to meet someone halfway distance-wise. Nashville, Knoxville, Lexington, and Louisville would all be larger markets than your home town yet make for reasonable drives. You don't want to ship a Dob within the US. They're just too big and heavy unless you have a merchant account. Be patient, but always make it clear you want to buy it, or they'll move on to a more likely buyer. You can always back out later if there are real issues when you see it in person.

You might have been looking at Syrtis Major Planum. Did it look sort of like the following images? Along with the polar caps, it tends to be the highest contrast feature visible on Mars from the Earth.

Many stores in the US charge a 15% restocking fee because, by law in many parts of the US, you can't resell a used item as new. You could try to charge the new price for it, but most folks will demand a discount once the fact it was a return/refurb is disclosed, which the 15% restocking fee covers. Many unscrupulous retailers simply re-shrink-wrap the box and hope you don't complain. In the US, return policies must be posted by retailers in most states. If the retailer has a no-returns policy, that is perfectly legal. The only exceptions under federal law are for 1. if the sold good is defective or 2. if the seller breaks the sales contract. However, word of mouth gets around pretty quickly online about retailers with bad return policies, so most honor some sort of 30 day return policy. However, you may be responsible for return shipping unless the item is defective or not as described.

Pick out something quick and get on the waiting list at a reputable dealer or two if you want it by Christmas. You might get lucky and find a good used scope while waiting.

If the focuser was in the middle of its travel range when the image was the most compact, you may have issues other than limited in or out focus. Can you point your scope at a distant tower during the daytime to test out the various combinations? Ideally, it should be at least a couple of miles away to better simulate infinity focus as at night.

At least in the US, most states don't allow you to return a car you bought. A very few have lemon laws to allow for the return of seriously flawed vehicles. Also, underwear cannot be returned once removed from its sealed packaging.

You'll find just about every retailer is out of stock on just about all telescopes, so you might as well continue saving up for a new 8" when they become available again. That, and watch the astro classifieds (Cloudy Nights and Astromart) as well as Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for used ones.

Two problems: Over $200 to ship to the US from FLO. Out of stock for at least 40 days.

The 102slt is an f/6, so it should be fine with the 25mm + x3 Barlow = ~8mm. It could be that the focuser doesn't have enough in-travel for that Barlow. Do you have the focuser tube retracted all the way when the object image is smallest? You could try removing the diagonal and using the scope in straight-through mode to see if it will come to focus. You could also try putting the Barlow ahead of the diagonal to see if that combination comes to focus. It will yield more than 3x in that configuration.

Nothing to be sorry for at all. You started the thread. It's almost expected that you report on your final decision/outcome no matter how much later.

Keep looking up. I got some really good Mars views last night around 1:30am with my 8" Newt and binoviewers. The latter made details pop into view that were only hinted at before at the same power in monovision.

I can cross import FLO's Starguiders, especially if I buy them 7 at a time, far cheaper than buying them new here from any US retailer.

Actually, that's a 12.5" f/5 finder scope on that 40" Dob: The 40-inch is 17 feet high when pointed at the zenith. It weighs over 800 lbs. Steve (Swayze) and Bruce worked for months grinding, polishing, and figuring the mirror. The truss tubes are covered with a black shroud during observing sessions, to enclose the tube and block stray light. The "finder" scope mounted piggyback on the mirror box, seen here on the right side of the photo, is a 12.5" f/5 telescope, also built by Steve. The first photo was taken at our Goat Mt. site, with Mt. Hood in the background. The ladder is a 16-foot orchard ladder built with extra steps. It is very stable, resting on 3 feet with a very wide base. My point being that various folks have gone to great lengths to make faint objects bigger/brighter and small objects larger/higher resolution. Anyone using an 8" scope is going to have to have tempered expectations.

Probably no worse than a chromed brass barrel.

Get a 30" or larger Dob with a hand figured mirror and observe from a high desert location with good laminar flow. Under those conditions, you can really push up the magnification to make planets look reasonably large. 😁

Same with bicycles and bicycle parts. Tires and tubes in particular are nigh on impossible to find even today. My grown kids refurbished a couple of 25 year old mountain bikes the wife and I hadn't ridden together in decades. Used bikes have become a hot commodity on Facebook Marketplace. My son bought a road bike that turned out to have too large a frame for him, so he sold it on to my 6' 4" future son-in-law for what he paid for it. For a while during the summer, area bike shops had a 3 week backlog of work, so you had to be patient while they refurbished your bike.

You might try aluminum foil tape on the insertion barrel.

You have to return the scope to get the refund. 🤔

The 12.5mm Morpheus is supposed to be quite nice and comparatively light. The 22mm Omegon Redline SW (Astro Tech AF70) is a close runner-up to the 22mm NT4. Once the eye cup is screwed off, it's easier to take in its 70 degree AFOV than the NT4's 82 degrees since it also has a 30mm eye lens. It only starts to get astigmatic in the outer 10% of the field, but it's mild. I prefer it over my 24mm APM UFF if I have a 2" focuser available. I had to do a bunch of A-B comparisons with the NT4 before I made the decision to retire the AT AF70 to my B-team case. Even if you only see 70 degrees with eyeglasses, it's still way more than the 45 degrees of the SLV. Vixen claims 50 degrees, but all the LV and NLV predecessors from 7mm on down were all 45 degrees, and several reliable folks have confirmed that the SLVs are no different. Wide field is a huge boon for non-tracking scopes at high powers. Another good but relatively affordable option is the recently discontinued 6.5mm Meade HD-60. It has a measured 64 degree AFOV and 15mm of usable eye relief. I've found it to be a very respectable performer with no major issues.

Beautiful observing location. 👍

What you got was a customer return that they just sent back out without doing any quality checks. Unfortunately, this is pretty common in the US. You have no way of knowing how long it will take them to "repair" it nor how well done those repairs will be made. Once you agree to a repair instead of a return, you are then hostage to their timeline with no legal or financial recourse.

More than likely, they'll send you a refurbished scope. You can check this by making an indelible mark somewhere inconspicuous on the scope that you know to be unique to you. The scope they return "fixed" will be someone else's return that went through the repair process earlier. You'll be able to tell because it will have wear marks somewhere, and yet different from your original scope. That, and your mark will be missing. This happens a lot with warranty returns. It's doubtful they would bother with reblackening the interior of the tube since they probably don't have the local facilities to do that. Another problem is that the warranty return process can last 2 to 3 months because they're under no obligation to hurry.

I was thinking renting telescopes might not be such a bad business proposition if the fees are setup properly.

As Mike at Astronomics (Cloudy Nights sponsor) recently said in his mailing list as pertains to constrained product supply: Due to unexpected demand in astronomy products from a stay at home pandemic, rocket launches, and a very bright comet all manufacturers are stuck in an awkward position that nobody could have predicted. We appreciate your interest and your understanding in the matter as we are filling orders as fast as products can come in. Astronomy is a hobby about patience, so please have a little with us currently. Thank you.

It reduced the focal length of the telescope as seen by the eyepiece or camera, but not the physical focal length of the telescope. It does this by compressing the image circle into a smaller footprint. That's why they're also referred to as telecompressors. @10-7You never mentioned if you intended to use it with eyepieces or a camera or even with what type of scope. The focal reducer/correctors for SCTs work pretty well with 1.25" eyepieces. Refractor focal reducers are mainly intended for astrophotography. The cheap, generic 0.5x focal reducers don't work well at all with most eyepieces and telescopes. They are mainly intended for very small imaging chips.