Telescope Reviews: Suggestions for Orion Sirius Repair?

Mich - it does seem to be the case that spares are tough to get which would hinder a repair business. Also most astro folk fall into one of two categories roughly;

KNOW ALL - these are the wisest of the wise and can identify any star in a scecond. GoTo pfffft!!! they can pick out a star and align the crustiest of telescopes faster than a gunslinger. They are also able to reduce almost any astro kit to its constituent atoms and reassamble it in the dark. They tend to smoke pipes.

KNOW NOTHING - These are the rest of us. This includes people like me who have a good grasp of some aspects but are pretty clueless when it comes to other things. This group includes peope who can identify any star in the heavens but who struggle to connect a 12v power supply or the ones like me who can take almost anything mechanical to pieces but struggle to identify the moon. They tend to have smoke coming out their ears

THIRD GROUP FROM THE HOBBY - These are the peope who buy scopes from WalMart or ebay. They arent around long enough to buy much so arent included. Life Jim but not as WE known it

The problem with doing mount repairs is twofold. You only have a smallish target market because the KNOW ALL group above and half of the KNOW NOTHING group wont ever use your services. The part of the market that will use your services will expect them to be either free or VERY cheap. This is aggravated because the KNOW ALL group and the wannabe KNOW ALLS (like me) will offer to fix peoples broken stuff via email or by writing tutorials in the spirit of proliferating a non profiteering speard of know how.

To take my HEQ5 to bits and reasamble with great care, relube and tune the mount to perfect was the best part of 8 hours work. To put that on a paying basis look at the numbers......

Lets assume that every week I had 5x HEQ5 mounts to repair. Each one could potentially take 8 hours. That would be 5 days work. Assuming all the mounts could be repaired with no spares because the mounts had simple lube or adjustkment problems they would still cost a minimum of $220 to look at each mount. Why so expensive ?

Well I would need to make $4,400 a month to pay my rent, buy food, support a lifestyle etc ( I am in the UK ). That wouldnt be a lavish lifestyle that would pay me the same as I earn as a secretary in a government office.

Soooooo that works out at $1,100 per week - divided by 5 mounts = $220

That takes no account of increased tax on earnings, overheads for the business like tools, spares etc. And it assumes that every mount is the same, the reality is you would have to handle all Synta mounts as a minimum. That wouldnt be a business on those terms it would be a hobby.

To make money and make it worthwhile you'd have to lift those prices by at least 60% to take into account spares, cashflow etc. so now you'd be looking for customers with $352 to spend each time PLUS the cost of shipment which for a big mount like an HEQ5 could cost (in the UK) around $25 so the customer now has to spend $400 to get his mount looked at and that assumes he doesnt have to have any spares and that the problem is easily diagnosed. What happends when its something obscure like guide port jitter on wet Thursdays when theres an 'R' in the month.

About the only way to get spares for these things is buy new ones and take them to bits. Thats an expensive sparing operation. Rather like car dealer having to buy a whole Toyota coupe because he needs a spare front wishbone.

I dont think the market would bear it myself. If I thought for a second it would AND it was sustainable I'd pack up work tomorrow

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No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit

Edited by astro_baby (07/04/09 07:31 AM)