John MacDonald

I have an issue with a Redcat 51 i bought secondhand 2 years ago. I took it out of my obsy for a clean and to blow dust off the lens and change cameras. As I was holding it vertically resting the base on my thigh to unscew the lens cap I felt and saw the focuser and lens tube move. There is play of around 1.5mm around the focusing tube where it enters the back of scope. There appears to be no way to adjust play and I read recently on an American forum about a guy with a redcat who thought he had tilt which he couldnt dial out with the adjuster. He paid WO $500 to repair the unit but they dont give a diagnosis or explain what repairs have been made. Anyone had the same problem? rumour has it WO glue the helical focusing tube into the back body. There are two gaskets on the back body which i dare not remove but if anyone has taken one of these apart for repair it would be interesting to know. I dont fancy paying WO £500 to repair a bad glue job if thats what it is and its still sharp right up the edge. Any ideas John

I found the handset annoying beyond belief so i bought a Sky-Watcher SynScan WiFi Adapter as soon as they came out, cost me £55 from widescreen centre then sold the hand set for £85. Downloaded Synscan Pro app for iphone/ipad and pc version so i now control my mount primarily with my Ipad. Dead easy to use also as my mount is permanent i usually dont need to star align unless i change telescope.

I'm a bit late wading in on this one, I have a star 71 v2 in blue the first new telescope I bought in 2020 and its a beautiful object as are all WO telescopes. My gripe with WO is they are forever changing and discontinuing products so by the time i have saved up for the scope I want its gone. I bought a used redcat51 and I hate it. Don't get me wrong optically its a fantastic performer, the pelican nebula pic attached is 6 x 5m exposures with an AA294C camera no flat bias or dark and stretched greatly showing round stars right up to the edge. Helical focusing is a nightmare and I gain very little extra FOV. My star 71 is much easier to focus and is going back into the obsy after christmas and the redcat will find a new home. the FOV on the redcat 71 is exactly the same as the Star 71 but the Star 71 is £600 cheaper if you can find a new one anywhere. I just don't see where the value difference is between the 2 scopes but that's irrelevant now as it's no longer made. Their previous big project the Pegasus observation binocular had possibly the shortest life of any WO product, I remember waiting for it to appear on the website of the usual sellers and it only appeared on the widescreen centre with a POA tag and I don't think they ever had one. This is now my holy grail as so few where made it may be many years before I get to see one let alone own one. WO have a lovely product but it doesn't need updating every 5 minutes.

It had been on a couple of hours when I enquired so didn't expect it to be available, going to mount this on top of the WOflt98 I bought last week and capture both close and widefield of same targets at the same time.

bought a new to me scope last week, since then no sky, bought a redcat yesterday arriving tomorrow and forecast for next 7 days crap.