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TMB 115 F7 Apo, AOK AYO Alt-Az Mount, Denkmeier Binoviewer and Meade 5000 plossl eyepieces. The complete outfit I bought my first telescope back in 1990, a 6î Bausch & Lomb SCT, a pretty awful scope but it got me started. I then bought a 4î F13 Carton refractor which was very good for planets but so long you could use it as a pole vault! I then got my first really high quality scope a 6î Intes Mak-Newtonian (the Orion version), a truly fabulous scope for planets and deep sky but rather bulky on an EQ6 mount - I came to realise that on too many nights I just could not be bothered to set it all up. I then discovered the joys of simple astronomy by using an 80mm Revelation Apo on a Vixen Porta mount. All of a sudden I was under the stars whenever possible. Whatís the old adage; the best telescope is the one you use most! Having got the Alt-Az bug I decided to see if I could get close to the Intes quality with a portable scope I could use on an Alt-Az mount. After much research, and a short time with a very nice Vixen 103 Apo, the TMB 115 was chosen. At just over 15lbs the scope was too heavy for my Porta mount so I looked for an alternative, and initially settled on a William Optics Eazy Touch (mounted on a superb Berlebach tripod). The mount was one of the later black Chinese made models, not the original silver ones which were made by AOK in Switzerland. After two uses the mount had started to develop play and was sent back to the shop. I replaced it with the original that inspired the WO mount, the Swiss made AOK AYO. While this mount is identical in shape to the WO it has totally different internals and has one huge benefit over the WO, you can lock the axis. This is invaluable when changing eyepieces. Why WO doesnít have this feature on the Eazy Touch is beyond me. On the two nights I used the WO mount it was a complete pain, worrying if I had balanced my precious scope properly or if it would it come crashing down at the front when I removed the eyepieces from the binoviewer. I have now used the excellent AYO mount for a year and it has developed no play at all and is as good as new. A great mount that regularly takes up to 235x on the moon and planets with no problem. While it looks the same as the WO Eazy Touch (apart from colour) the AOK mount is much easier to use as it has locking axis, and it seems better engineered, but is not finished to quite the same standard as the William Optics clone. Anyway on to the telescope. The TMB is a very cleverly designed scope. When you first get it out of the box you canít believe how short it is, not only because of its sliding dewcap, but also its unique sliding extendable focus tube. See the photos below to see how the scope magically extends. This design has two major benefits, firstly the tube is very compact for a 4î inch scope (just 24î inches or 627mm fully collapsed) and secondly it can come to focus with a binoviewer attached without the need for a barlow, allowing great widefield views (31x with a 60 degree field of view with my 26m Meade 5000 plossls). Note. Switching to a binoviewer was one of the best astronomical decisions I have ever made, I virtually never use one eye any more. Try looking at a picture you love with just one eye and see how much detail, depth and contrast you lose, and even how much smaller the image seems to appear! The brain is used to merging signals from both eyes. Looking through one eye is like listening to stereo with one speaker unplugged! I use a Denkmeier standard which is not only fantastic quality but also great value, the company is also run by real gentleman, who has pride in his product. Anyway back to the TMB. The scope is obviously hand built, and this is both good and not so good. The optics benefit massively from their hand built quality (mine has an amazing 988 strehl ratio) and this is surely what you buy a scope for ñ itís optical performance. But the scopes hand built pedigree also comes through in the tube, which while being completely functional is aesthetically a little crude compared to an Astro-Physics or a William Optics. The internal blacking is obviously hand painted and the focuser and dew shield are held in place with flush fit screws. This affects the performance not one little bit, and to some may give the scope more credibility as the money has been spent on creating world class optics, not pretty anodising. The enamelling on the tube, though, is of very high quality and the whole thing is very well put together. Robust is the word that springs to mind. The scope comes with a Feather Touch focuser, the mechanics of which are as good as they get, but why canít Feather Touch finish the inner baffles with some sort of mat paint? Look at the photo below to see the performance degrading shiny metal in the draw tube; this can only reduce contrast, particularly when viewing the moon. Fortunately I use an Astro-Physics Barcon barlow before the diagonal, this slides down inside the Feather Touch focusing tube removing these shiny bits from the optical path. The Feather Touch focuser is too shiny inside. Come on guys, have a look down an AP Barcon barlow if you want to see how to really remove ALL internal reflections. I use a red dot finder with the scope and have had an Intes handle cut down to size, which makes a huge difference to handling and is something I would really recommend. Full Equipment list:  TMB 115 F7 Apo (made Jan 2007, strehl ratio .988)  Berlebach Model 18 Tripod  AOK AYO Alt-Az Mount  Denkmeier standard binoviewer  Astrophysics Barcon barlow (used before the diagonal giving 3.2x magnification).  Astrophysics 2î Maxbright diagonal  Meade 5000 plossls 26mm, 20mm & 14mm  Televue 11mm plossls  Meade 3000 16mm plossls  University Optics 12.5mm orthoscopics  GSO 2î 42mm Wide  Orion UltraBlock and SkyGlow filters Eyepieces from left to right: Meade 5000 26mm, 20mm, Meade 3000 16mm, Meade 5000 14mm, University Optics 12.5 Orthoscopic and Televue 11mm plossls. The Meade 5000 plossls are absolutely fantastic when used with the Astro-Physics Barcon barlow. Contrast and sharpness is as good as you get, but they are a little soft at the edges when used without the barlow, indicating that they like slower scopes. The 20 and 14 are my favourites, giving 128x and 182x magnifications with the barlow. They have great eye relief and a wonderful and hard to describe brilliance to the whites that none of my other eyepieces (including the excellent Televue) can match. The 60 degree field of view is a great boon with a non-tracking mount. I should point out that the AP Barcon barlow is perfectly suited to binoviewers. Not only is it truly superb quality but it is relatively low powered, allowing its use before a diagonal without obtaining a ridiculous magnification factor. So how does it perform? This bit could be very short: optically virtually perfect, the end. But Iím sure you want more detail. OK the diffraction rings are perfect on both sides of focus; I have not been able to detect any spherical aberration and there is NO colour either in focus or out of focus, even at 300x; if you see colour, itís atmospheric. Contrast is 99% of what is possible, only an oil based triplet from AP or TEC is going to give you that last one percent. Focus action is wonderful and the focuser tension is fully adjustable (this is needed when you have the Denkmeier loaded up with two Meade 5000 26mm plossls). Earlier this year, while on holiday in France near the Dordogne, I drove up into the local hills (600meters) and had the most amazing views of Jupiter at 233x. The air was completely still, Iíve never seen it like that in my home town (Bristol in the UK). It was really amazing; I was actually able to see details and swirls inside the great red spot! Fantastic. I could easily see festoons and banding in the belts and the Galilean moons were all clear discs. On Saturn the Cassini division is always easily visible and subtle banding on the planet can be seen. On Mars surface details are easily visible, when seeing allows. I say this because using this scope has taught me how much seeing can affect things. Last winter I had a wonderful night viewing Mars, so much detail was on view. The next night I had some friends round so I decided to show them what you could see with a great scope. But bad seeing meant all we could see was an orange blob with no surface details at all! Now you are most probably aware that small aperture scopes are affected less by bad seeing, so if you live in a city a scope like the TMB can make the best of poor seeing conditions. The moon through this scope is literally eye popping. With the binoviewer you feel like you are hovering above the surface. The amount of detail I recently saw in the Copernicus crater matched that of great astro-photos taken by very large scopes. So what about deep sky? Well itís only 4î scope so it can only do so much, but living in a city with terrible light pollution there is only so much you can see anyway. Its fantastic contrast, noticeably better than ANY scope with a central obstruction above 20% (SCTís are usually about 35%), makes globular and open clusters fantastic. The scope also has pin point star images across the field. M35 is my favourite, inky black sky (away from light pollution) and an eyepiece full of jewel-like stars. I have never used it for photography so I cannot comment on how flat its field is. I believe you need to buy a focal reducer if you want to use a decent sized chip. I place the scope in an unheated conservatory if Iím planning to view; this means the scope is fully ready for maximum magnification within less than 10 minutes of setting up. From a warm room it takes about 30 to 40 minutes to reach thermal equilibrium. Setting up can be done in less than five minutes with an Alt-Az mount. Conclusion The TMB is a truly great scope. It is about the largest scope you can truly call portable, its optics are as good as you can buy, its built like a tank (if a little ëagriculturalí in places) and will last you a lifetime. If you live in a city with bad light pollution, or if planets and the moon are your thing, this scope delivers in spades. So is it worth paying over twice as much for a TMB than one of the new Meade/other 127 Chinese triplets? That depends on how much you able to spend. If you cannot afford a TMB the Meade/Astronomics/others will serve you very well. Interestingly, I recently met a guy who worked in a telescope shop who had owned one of the new Meade 127ís, and had sold it for a second hand TMB 115. He rated the Meade highly but felt it could not take the magnification of the smaller TMB. Quality is nearly always more important than aperture for viewing planets. So did I achieve my original ambition of getting a portable scope as good as my 6î Intes Mak-Newt? Well I always reckoned my Intes was as good as a top class 5î triplet apo, so I would have to say you could see a touch more detail in the Intes. But, of course, it was much bigger, heavier and not as flexible as the TMB, and the difference is very small. So Iím very happy with my TMB. Iím 50 in a couple of years and I hope to get my ultimate scope to celebrate this coming of age. I have three on the list: TMB 130 F9.25 Super Planetary (only 15mm bigger but I have heard amazing rumours about this long focal ratio scope), Tec 140 or AP 140. Have to wait and see what the pound/dollar rate is before I make my mind up. Iím also interested in an Intes Micro 715 Super Planetary. Has anyone out their compared a 715 to a top quality 5 inch apo? Enjoy Godís universe. 'mso-ansi-language:EN-US'> While it looks the same as the WO Eazy Touch (apart from colour) the AOK mount is much easier to use as it has locking axis, and it seems better engineered, but is not finished to quite the same standard as the William Optics clone. Anyway on to the telescope. The TMB is a very cleverly designed scope. When you first get it out of the box you can’t believe how short it is, not only because of its sliding dewcap, but also its unique sliding extendable focus tube. See the photos below to see how the scope magically extends. This design has two major benefits, firstly the tube is very compact for a 4½” inch scope (just 24½” inches or 627mm fully collapsed) and secondly it can come to focus with a binoviewer attached without the need for a barlow, allowing great widefield views (31x with a 60 degree field of view with my 26m Meade 5000 plossls). Note. Switching to a binoviewer was one of the best astronomical decisions I have ever made, I virtually never use one eye any more. Try looking at a picture you love with just one eye and see how much detail, depth and contrast you lose, and even how much smaller the image seems to appear! The brain is used to merging signals from both eyes. Looking through one eye is like listening to stereo with one speaker unplugged! I use a Denkmeier standard which is not only fantastic quality but also great value, the company is also run by real gentleman, who has pride in his product. Anyway back to the TMB. The scope is obviously hand built, and this is both good and not so good. The optics benefit massively from their hand built quality (mine has an amazing 988 strehl ratio) and this is surely what you buy a scope for – it’s optical performance. But the scopes hand built pedigree also comes through in the tube, which while being completely functional is aesthetically a little crude compared to an Astro-Physics or a William Optics. The internal blacking is obviously hand painted and the focuser and  dew shield are held in place with flush fit screws. This affects the performance not one little bit, and to some may give the scope more credibility as the money has been spent on creating world class optics, not pretty anodising. The enamelling on the tube, though, is of very high quality and the whole thing is very well put together. Robust is the word that springs to mind. The scope comes with a Feather Touch focuser, the mechanics of which are as good as they get, but why can’t Feather Touch finish the inner baffles with some sort of mat paint? Look at the photo below to see the performance degrading shiny metal in the draw tube; this can only reduce contrast, particularly when viewing the moon. Fortunately I use an Astro-Physics Barcon barlow before the diagonal, this slides down inside the Feather Touch focusing tube removing these shiny bits from the optical path. The Feather Touch focuser is too shiny inside. Come on guys, have a look down an AP Barcon barlow if you want to see how to really remove ALL internal reflections. I use a red dot finder with the scope and have had an Intes handle cut down to size, which makes a huge difference to handling and is something I would really recommend. Full Equipment list: TTMB 115 F7 Apo (made Jan 2007, strehl ratio .988) · Berlebach Model 18 Tripod · AOK AYO Alt-Az Mount · Denkmeier standard binoviewer · Astrophysics Barcon barlow (used before the diagonal giving 3.2x magnification). · Astrophysics 2” Maxbright diagonal · Meade 5000 plossls 26mm, 20mm & 14mm · Televue 11mm plossls · Meade 3000 16mm plossls · University Optics 12.5mm orthoscopics · GSO 2” 42mm Wide · Orion UltraBlock and SkyGlow filters   Eyepieces from left to right: Meade 5000 26mm, 20mm, Meade 3000 16mm, Meade 5000 14mm, University Optics 12.5 Orthoscopic and Televue 11mm plossls.   The Meade 5000 plossls are absolutely fantastic when used with the Astro-Physics Barcon barlow. Contrast and sharpness is as good as you get, but they are a little soft at the edges when used without the barlow, indicating that they like slower scopes. The 20 and 14 are my favourites, giving 128x and 182x magnifications with the barlow. They have great eye relief and a wonderful and hard to describe brilliance to the whites that none of my other eyepieces (including the excellent Televue) can match. The 60 degree field of view is a great boon with a non-tracking mount.   I should point out that the AP Barcon barlow is perfectly suited to binoviewers. Not only is it truly superb quality but it is relatively low powered, allowing its use before a diagonal without obtaining a ridiculous magnification factor.   So how does it perform? This bit could be very short: optically virtually perfect, the end. But I’m sure you want more detail. OK the diffraction rings are perfect on both sides of focus; I have not been able to detect any spherical aberration and there is NO colour either in focus or out of focus, even at 300x; if you see colour, it’s atmospheric. Contrast is 99% of what is possible, only an oil based triplet from AP or TEC is going to give you that last one percent. Focus action is wonderful and the focuser tension is fully adjustable (this is needed when you have the Denkmeier loaded up with two Meade 5000 26mm plossls). Earlier this year, while on holiday in France near the Dordogne, I drove up into the local hills (600meters) and had the most amazing views of Jupiter at 233x. The air was completely still, I’ve never seen it like that in my home town (Bristol in the UK). It was really amazing; I was actually able to see details and swirls inside the great red spot! Fantastic. I could easily see festoons and banding in the belts and the Galilean moons were all clear discs. On Saturn the Cassini division is always easily visible and subtle banding on the planet can be seen. On Mars surface details are easily visible, when seeing allows. I say this because using this scope has taught me how much seeing can affect things. Last winter I had a wonderful night viewing Mars, so much detail was on view. The next night I had some friends round so I decided to show them what you could see with a great scope. But bad seeing meant all we could see was an orange blob with no surface details at all! Now you are most probably aware that small aperture scopes are affected less by bad seeing, so if you live in a city a scope like the TMB can make the best of poor seeing conditions. The moon through this scope is literally eye popping. With the binoviewer you feel like you are hovering above the surface. The amount of detail I recently saw in the Copernicus crater matched that of great astro-photos taken by very large scopes. So what about deep sky? Well it’s only 4½” scope so it can only do so much, but living in a city with terrible light pollution there is only so much you can see anyway. Its fantastic contrast, noticeably better than ANY scope with a central obstruction above 20% (SCT’s are usually about 35%), makes globular and open clusters fantastic. The scope also has pin point star images across the field. M35 is my favourite, inky black sky (away from light pollution) and an eyepiece full of jewel-like stars. I have never used it for photography so I cannot comment on how flat its field is. I believe you need to buy a focal reducer if you want to use a decent sized chip. I place the scope in an unheated conservatory if I’m planning to view; this means the scope is fully ready for maximum magnification within less than 10 minutes of setting up. From a warm room it takes about 30 to 40 minutes to reach thermal equilibrium. Setting up can be done in less than five minutes with an Alt-Az mount. Conclusion The TMB is a truly great scope. It is about the largest scope you can truly call portable, its optics are as good as you can buy, its built like a tank (if a little ‘agricultural’ in places) and will last you a lifetime. If you live in a city with bad light pollution, or if planets and the moon are your thing, this scope delivers in spades. So is it worth paying over twice as much for a TMB than one of the new Meade/other 127 Chinese triplets? That depends on how much you able to spend. If you cannot afford a TMB the Meade/Astronomics/others will serve you very well. Interestingly, I recently met a guy who worked in a telescope shop who had owned one of the new Meade 127’s, and had sold it for a second hand TMB 115. He rated the Meade highly but felt it could not take the magnification of the smaller TMB. Quality is nearly always more important than aperture for viewing planets. So did I achieve my original ambition of getting a portable scope as good as my 6” Intes Mak-Newt? Well I always reckoned my Intes was as good as a top class 5” triplet apo, so I would have to say you could see a touch more detail in the Intes. But, of course, it was much bigger, heavier and not as flexible as the TMB, and the difference is very small. So I’m very happy with my TMB. I’m 50 in a couple of years and I hope to get my ultimate scope to celebrate this coming of age. I have three on the list: TMB 130 F9.25 Super Planetary (only 15mm bigger but I have heard amazing rumours about this long focal ratio scope), Tec 140 or AP 140. Have to wait and see what the pound/dollar rate is before I make my mind up. I’m also interested in an Intes Micro 715 Super Planetary. Has anyone out their compared a 715 to a top quality 5 inch apo? Enjoy God’s universe.