Telescope Reviews: Fork Mounted SCT

A fine article, and I generally agree with it, though I do not think that the old, classic fork-mounted SCT's had quite reached perfection. A few comments of my own:

- I completely agree that the new scopes that are completely dependent upon the electronics can be a serious turn-off to many people in the hobby. Electronics can be faulty, have bugs, or just plain not work. Plus, one has to spend time playing with the electronics, learning how to do the most basic of things with them since the scopes have no manual mode. The electronics are not as reliable as they could be - look at all the horror stories of people having mounts break down and having to send the whole scope back to Celestron or Meade - and they have problems in cold weather, like most electronics. Finally, the need for batteries and gizmos takes away from the elegant and portable simplicity of the SCT design.

- Cost is another deciding factor. One has to pay about $1,000 more for a basic 8" SCT these days than an 8" Dob, in part for the GoTo system. For that much money, one has to really, really want that GoTo system and everything that comes with it or one will just get a Dob.

- Both companies should seriously consider releasing a non-GoTo SCT, as suggested, but learn from past mistakes. I had an 8" Celestron Classic 8 for years, and it really was not a perfected system: here are some improvements based upon experience over the years:

--- Sell the non-GoTo SCT with a good, high quality finderscope. A RA 8x50 would be idea. Better yet, sell them with that finder on one side and a right angle, correct image unity finder on the other side. SCT's have a narrow field of view (without a focal reducer) and thus need either GoTo or good, easy to use finderscopes to be able to find objects. I suffered with the basic, straight-through 6x30 finderscope on my Classic 8 for years, and it was basically useless and very difficult to use. Celestron and Meade never figured this out - they sold their scopes with toy 6x30 finders for years, and even later on, their larger finders were still straight-through, which is useless on an SCT.

--- Ensure that the scope can be balanced easily, at least along the declination axis. This was a problem with the original SCT's - when used with big, heavy eyepieces or big finderscopes, the tube would suddenly become back heavy, which was a nuisance. The scope should either have sliding counterweights or be able to be slid forwards and backwards in the forkmount.

--- Better mechanics in the fine-movement system. The tangent arm system in the declination axis was a pain since you'd run out of travel at the worst times - there is no reason that they cannot have a system in both axis with unlimited travel. Perhaps more annoying was that both axis only had two states - locked (and thus only moveable by fine motion controls) or completely unlocked. Ideally, the new scopes would take a lesson from Dobs and instead of swinging freely when the fine motion controls are disengaged, one could set the tension or friction. So, one could disengage a clamp without the scope wanting to swing wildly in that axis, move it manually to a target, and then re-engage the clamp before using the fine motion controls. Think of it as a Dob-like mount (adjustable friction and properly balanced) with the ability to use fine motion controls and tracking when mounted on a wedge.

Something like that I think would sell since it address the main problems (that I've seen, anyway) in the old SCT designs without having to become dependent on GoTo and electronics. Maybe toss in a reduced price focal reducer (to make things even easier to find) and you'd have a pretty nice system that is easy to use even when compared to a Dob and doesn't cost a fortune or need electronics to work.

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Matthew
IDA member
XT8i, 10x50 binoculars, lots of eyepieces