Orion Optics Dobsonian Base

[DaveGibbons]

I hope this short review will be of interest to some of you.

A few months ago I picked up a used Orion Optics 10” f4.8 tube to mount on my non goto heq5 mount. The scope is a couple of years old in immaculate condition and has an excellent set of optics. The tube is light holds it collimation and works very well as a visual set up on the heq5. Rather fancied using it in a dob mount as well.

I’ve owned a number of dobs over the past few years, all the main budget ones. 2 xt10 intelliscopes a Meade 12” Lightbridge, Skywatcher 10” flextube and aRevelation (gso) 12`”. All had good to very good optics (except the revelation that was below average). All had one thing in common the ubiquitous MDF base. Slight variations in design with the bearings some having Teflon and others roller bearings but ultimately all the the scopes had issues with flex and stiction in the bases that in the end grew tiresome.

Don’t get me wrong all the scopes are easy to use and give great freedom for roaming the sky and lets be honest deep sky and low to medium magnification is what many will use them for, but they are a struggle at higher magnifications and I found the base motions not to my liking.

I took the plunge and ordered a 00 all aluminium base along with tube rings and trunnions to fit the ota , also a friction brake. Now this little lot is not cheap, in fact you could pick up a used 12” dob set up for the price, but I want something that will last, not warp and allow smooth hand tracking at very high magnification as befits the excellent optics that this tube has

Surprisingly it was only 3 weeks from placing the order that it was ready (oo lead times are known to expand!) although I didn’t collect them for a couple of weeks. Opening the box reveals only four main pieces of powder coated aluminium along with tube rings and trunnions and you begin to wonder why it costs so much! On close inspection though you can see it just oozes engineering quality.Everything is manufactured to tight cnc machined tolerances and with basically one Allen key and 9 Allen screws it fits together beautifully.

You do need to assemble it on a perfectly flat surface and take care in squaring everything up and I did have to just run a drill through the hole that the friction brake mounts on as it was a little tight. Once assembled the compactness of the base really strikes you, it has a much smaller footprint than any of the mdf bases this makes it nice and compact. It does however require to be placed on a fairly flat surface, as the feet are not as wide apart as on the mdf bases, I place mine on a triangular ground board because of the lumps and bumps in my garden.

The trunnions run on 4 pieces of Teflon in the base side plates and have a nice smooth motion without any stiction. The bottom plate runs on three Teflon sliders with Centre bolt that can be adjusted if necessary, it was set perfectly when received.

It has proved to be a cracking bit of kit I just love it! I’ve always loved observing double stars, something that can very frustrating with a dob, you have the aperture but just can’t easily keep the object in the field of view.

The motions are so smooth and consistent I have no trouble using a 2x Barlow and 6mm orthoscopic with the scope giving over 400x magnification and tracking by hand. In fact I’ve had double stacked barlows and taken it up to 800 x and still managed to keep ahead of very tight doubles allowing them to drift through the field of view.

The friction brake set up allows you to use a heavier load such as barlows and webcams without rebalancing. The beauty of the tube rings mean you can slide The OTA up and down if using heavy cameras or binoviewers, you can also rotate the eyepiece position to suit, it is not fixed as with a normal dob set up.

It doesn’t come with any eyepiece holder so I added a flip lid box to the base using the two holes already present (I assume they are for an eyepiece bracket add on).

For me it solves the problem of less than perfect motion in the mdf bases. Is it worth the money? Thinking about it hand on heart probably for most people the answer will be no! It’s just too expensive. As I said earlier you could pick up a really nice used 12” complete set up for the price. For me it works and I can just about justify the cost as I am happy in my high power observing observing now.

I am sure the far east manufacturers will continue to improve their products and in the future liquid smooth motion will become the norm one day.

Cheers

Dave

[PaulC-I]

Very nice Dave. I'm glad that you have had a positive experience with OO. If they can keep a consistent quality assurance going and commit to their lead times they could be a force to be recond with, not just for their optics.

Love the brass knobs! nice touch!!

Paul

[johninderby]

Nice report. Most people don't realise just how much better the base is compared to one of the mdf bases that come with most dobs until they've seen an OO one in person. It is very pricey to buy seperately though.

There's also room for a lot of mods as well. Here's a photo of my 00 base for a 14" that's had or two additonal mods done to it.

John

[Rob]

That is nice... I'm almost sold for my 8". They do look the business, and the thought of finishing off the scope seems the right thing to do. The thought of making my own just does not sit well.. I don't have the time either.

Thanks for posting

Rob