Rod Kaufman

I understand you have the Orion or look-alike Adorama wide angle eps and are satified. You responded to my post about my current dissatisfaction with the eps. Since you are familiar with the performance of the eps in a large aperture fast scope, I may have gotten hold of a bad batch or my mirror is screwed up. I've collimated the scope many times. I rarely need to turn a screw more than an eighth to quarter turn to bring the cross-wires of the cheshire tube back to the center of the little circle on the primary. BTW the secondary has a dot which also aligns.

My proposition is to send you a couple of the eps, namely the 9 and 15. You check them out on a steady night. If they don't work for you, I know the problem is with the eps. I you find no problem, then I have the local telescope dealership here in Houston take a look at the scope.

I pay for shipping and insurance both ways. There no good to me now and some resolution can help me move on with this and decide the next step. If this is something you would be willing to do, please let me know and I'll exchange email or address with you.

Even though Adorama gave good customer service, they may be slightly bias. I need objectivity.

Appreciate you thinking it over.

David,
I think it would be preferable for you to link up with a local amateur group in your home town of Houston. This would save you the hassle of shipping the eyepieces and you could probably pop them in and out of a fast dob during a star party and see if the eyepieces are at fault. In addition, you could probably borrow a premium eyepiece from someone at a star party and try it your scope and then compare it with your own eyepieces. It sounds like your scope is collimated although I would recommend a laser in addition to a chesire eyepiece. Finally, use a good 7mm eyepiece and look at the in and out of focus images of polaris(since it hardly moves)and see if the diffraction patterns look similiar. If so, your optics are probably collimated and performing well. Give it a try.