RC Optical quality

Does anyone have any experience with the quality of RC optical products like tubes and mirror cells and so on? Not interested in optical quality but mechanical quality.

Also, how do they mount their primary mirrors? Center mount, mirror cells, what?

Thanks,
Mike

Mike:

I just got a 10" RCOS and it is superbly manufactured. The machining and fit and finish are remarkable and IMHO, comparable to Takahashi--which is to say, the best. The scope looks and feels like a Porsche. The mirror is mounted with a mirror cell with standard three-point adjustment.

Brad has some innovative designs for a collimation setup that make it very easy to collimate the RC, and it holds the collimation extremely well. The electronic secondary focuser is wonderful and precise, and the use of a special carbon-fiber composite allows it to keep precise focus throughout the night as temperature shifts (there is a balance between the carbon and a special epoxy that have coefficients of expansion and contraction that cancel out for a net result of essentially zero shift).

There is also a new Telescope Command Center setup that is just being wrapped up that interfaces with Maxim. It allows for active control of the primary and secondary temperatures as well as automated focusing.

Very slick. I am terribly impressed.

Jeff Hapeman