Re: Disappointed with Starmaster scope

Hey phil
I respect that you have a right to your opinion, but I see no reason to air it out on this forum. I've had 2 different ELs (not ELTS) and they have been great. The oak construction is very solid and there is barely any flexure, I even had my 10 up to 500x on Mars and the image was rock steady- this would be impossible if the scope was as bad as you say it is. Maybe you got screwed. Maybe someone made a 15 min copy of a starmaster and put all the labels on! Since you are in business yourself, you just generated a lot of negative publicity. Thats my opinion. One thing about Starmaster, they never critize the 'other guys' who build scopes. They have more class than that. I obviously don't!
George

Hi Phil,

Well it was not a $3000 scope that you bought, it was a $900 scope. Let us clarify that. $3000 will not buy a scope like yours if one were to present this amount to Starmaster in the current time.

You are a craftsman, so am I. Just admit it, not everyone is meticulous nor demands such attention to detail. You got what you paid for. Go out and spend $3000 on a new Starmaster structure and come back here and report what you find. It is unfair to complain about bad craftsmenship on a $900 OLD Starmaster and keep throwing around this arbitrary $3000 number.

I personally would not buy a truss dob from any manufacturer. In my opinion they are all excessively large, inefficiently laid out structures. There is no need for a separate altitude bearing when the bottom of the mirror box can provide the bearing curve. Enclosed mirror boxes prevent efficient passive cooling of the primary mirror. Then there is that monstrosity of an upper cage structure. People complain about balance problems with their truss scopes while overlooking how FAT that secondary cage really is. Look up Mel Bartels on a search engine and see what can really be done with large aperture newtonian optics. There is a much more efficient way to support those optics than just copying the brand x boxy form. Where is the innovation? Are all these truss makers copying each other's 1980's ATM scope?

When I get the time I am going to build my own 18" f/4.2 or 16" f/4.8 around my own ideas. Why not just start making your own line of truss scopes? You could really improve on the Obsession / Starsplitter / Starmaster / Discovery / Night Sky / Sky Designs / Telekit / etc etc etc. clones. Take what you did with your mirror cells and do an entire scope around your ideas. This is not unlike how Astro-Physics was launched. This company's founder could not buy a product which was up to his personal standards so he began making hiw own product. Where is Astro-Physics now in the industry?

Jeff Quinn