Solis Scientific telescopes - anyone got any memories?

[cathalferris]

I'm just chasing down a bit of a personal curiosity, if anyone else had a scope similar to my first proper scope, that would have been made in Scotland in the very early '90s.

My first "real" telescope after my 60mm Tasco was one imported new to Ireland from Scotland, back in late 1990 or so. It was a 222mm f/5.6 Newt, bought from an ad in the back of Astronomy Now. The scope was fairly simple in construction by current standards, but was huge and amazing by my standards as a kid of the time. The tube was built of a blue Hammerite painted sewer pipe, with the mirror glued to a felt backing, glued to a metal plate that had the collimation bolts attached. The finder used remounted 50mm binocular optics and there were 18mm and 25mm "volcano-top" kellners provided. The mount was a basic German Equatorial, with ~3" setting circles and manual slowmotion controls. There was a little engraved plaque on the side of the polar axis. The plaque on the GEM was, as far as I can remember, "Solis Scientific, Glasgow". It cost a pretty penny too, somewhere in the £800 range. Still managed to see Stephan's Quintet and the Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacts on Jupiter with it so I have plenty of fond memories.

I got curious recently to see what happened that company, and the people involved, and if anyone else had purchased one of those scopes. I found a listing here of the company but unsurprisingly the company itself is no longer in existence. There are references also to a Mr John Braithwaite who was a director of that company, and may have been the person that actually made the scope.

So, did anyone here have any experience of Solis Scientific and their telescopes, built in Scotland in the late '80s and early '90s?