Posts Made By: Joseph Aczel

Has anyone else had a problem with the quality control of the telescopes? I sent my CF 102 in for repair back in February, and I still don't have a working scope back. I've gotten back the wrong telescope, a telescope with severe CA and spherical aberration, and the last one arrived today with all 3 collimation screws having dropped out.

Everyone over there has been very nice to deal with, but they seem to be having lots of QC and shipping issues, at least in my experience.

If anyone knows an way I can just get a good performing scope back out of them I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks!!

I’ve seen a few ads recently claiming more than one generation of Celestron Silver Top EPs.

As a manager at a Celestron dealer in the late 80s and early 90s, I only remember one set of these, all will satin silver bodies and orange lettering. The two inch EP, 50mm, had a silver body and a black retaining ring. Some said fully coated and later orders said multi coated. As I remember the Celestron rep said there was no difference, the fully coated ones were just as coated as the multi coated ones, it was a marketing ploy.

A few years later Celestron sourced the EPs from Taiwan, and these had satin silver bodies and black tops/retaining rings, with black lettering.

As memory serves, the optical designs were similar between the Taiwan and Vixen versions,  but the Vixen sourced ones had a better build.

As far as I can remember, there were not successive generations of the silver top Vixen sourced plossls. As far as the 50mm being a later version bc of the black top, I still own the original Vixen version and it has a black top as well.

Anyone else have any other info?

Haven’t had comms from two different members re classified ads- is the messaging system down? Thanks for any reply.

Trying to get an idea of value. OTA is rolled aluminum, fully baffled, CNC machined cell and backplate that can both be collimated. Lens tested to better than 1/14th wave, test report is available. Tube is roughly 12 feet long with detachable dewshield. Build price was about 11k in 2013. Thanks.