Coulter 13.1 inch red tube

[Charlest3]

Just picked up an old reflector 13.1 inches, anybody ever had one of these?

[Dave In Vermont]

These scopes are very common, and from what I've read - their quaility varies widely from very good to utterly terrible. Seems it depends on what year it is from, and how well it was taken care of. You'll find many sources of reviews and information on these with a Google-search on them. And CloudyNights has many threads on them. Here's one:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/483294-optical-quality-of-coulter-131-inch-mirrors/

And another:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/470389-coulter-optics/

Good luck on yours -

Dave

[John]

They were very popular during the 1980's and 90's in the USA. Very few made it to this side of the Atlantic though.

Coulter went for the basic "light bucket" approach that offered the max aperture per $ spent. Great under dark skies for sucking in the photons from distant deep sky objects. Not quite so adept at planets and double stars but the views should be enjoyable none the less.

Looks like it needs a finder - Telrads are ideal for this sort of scope

[Peter Drew]

Not much to add to this, the smaller Coulter optics  seemed to be the more reliable so you may be lucky with yours.   

[Charlest3]

We'll see. I'm gonna do a little tune up tomorrow see how it does. Maybe down the road get it refigured.