Old-fashioned simplicity

[Ben Ritchie]

This kind of setup has rather gone out of fashion these days, but I think it has a huge amount going for it. It's my Vixen 80mm f/11.4 achromat on a Vixen Porta-II Alt-Az, and it's a cracking portable setup, especially for doubles. There are a few niggles, the length makes balance a bit tricky (remove an eyepiece and the objective heads earthwards, although at a fairly sedate pace) and the focuser is a little crunchy and covered in a bit too much sticky gloop. But it has huge charm and a great fun factor to it, and the optics punch well above their weight. And it's great value for money too.

Purists will notice a few errors in the detailing to make it a real old-school telescope - the plastic RDF isn't quite right and the "carbon fibre" diagonal and Radian are well out of place (better an orthoscopic, used straight-through for the real traditionalist). And as for the black tube rings ...

[Helen]

I can relate to this Ben as I bought these two together as a package. I set up in the study and it looked exactly like a 'proper telescope' should. (Mine has white tube rings. ) But its now been morphed into a rather nice solar scope . The focuser is now off and stored in case of future use, but somehow every time I pick it up I end up covered in that awful glue-like substance

Helen

[A McEwan]

Nowt wrong wit black tube rings. White tube + black rings = Unitron.

Nice setup. Ant