Feathertouch MicroFocuser - review

[noah4x4]

Having improved EP'S and diagonal and seen the benefit of these optical improvements to my Evolution 8, a Feathertouch MicroFocuser was low on my list of future desired enhancements. But I took the plunge and invested  £239. Now I wish I had purchased one much earlier. The Evolution's mount and tripod is pretty robust, but adjusting the original focuser did cause a little shake making it difficult to settle eyepiece with eye.  Now focusing is an absolute joy; with Incredible control and feather like touch. Does what it says on the tin.

Removing the old and installing the new is a potentially daunting experience. But the instructions are excellent as is the U-Tube video guidance. You do need to be careful to avoid getting the telescope's internal black lubricant everywhere, so have a box of tissues on hand to wipe screws and bolts that are gunked with the stuff. At first, you might experience some blind panic, as once installed, the number of turns to bring it back into focus is significant. But once there....WOW!

 

[brantuk]

3 minutes ago, noah4x4 said:

Now I wish I had purchased one much earlier.

My exact same experience - kept putting it off for far too long and when I eventually did it I wished I'd done it sooner - much sooner. It's a terrific upgrade and well worth the outlay.

[Mr Spock]

Same here. Best thing I did for my C9.25

[knobby]

It's a feather touch fan club !

Love mine too .

[noah4x4]

On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 20:25, knobby said:

It's a feather touch fan club !

Love mine too .

The feather touch fan club? The mind boggles where we might end up in search engines. Careful, else the moderators will close us down.

More seriously, over distances of light years it's perhaps hard to define or measure the improvement that a microfocuser will offer  You simply have to witness the difference. But to put this in terrestrial perspective, Today, whilst doing a bit of minor maintainance  I aimed my Evolution 8 at a chimney pot  on which birds perch about half a mile away and in merely a 25mm Televue plossl (81×) l managed to see dust coming off a thrush's wings and make out its individual tiny hairs breadth fluffy bits (barbs?).  The 10/1 ratio permits awesome precision, and my eyesight is far from 20/20.

[Brian Nordstrom]

Another fan here as well this is the single  best accessory I have ever grabbed for my C9.25 XLT carbon fiber , just  precision engineering at its best and they make focusing so precise  ,  these are really a lovely bit of gear  .

You wont be disappointed .

 

Just one thing , they don't come with fitting instructions , you just google them off FT's web site it's as easy as because they are great instructions , mine took 10 minutes to fit . 

They do this to save confusion because there are so many different CAT's out there as they have been made for 40 odd years now and FT make one for most , there are 2 totally different focus mechanisim's for the C9.25 and these are relatively new kid's on the block.

 

Noah 4x4 ,,,,, why do you think I refer to these as FT's  ,,,, LOL .

Brian.