Telescope Reviews: Anyone have an XX16g on the way?

I finally had first light! I have a park near my condo with only one light which is blocked by trees. However, surrounding stadium lights upped the light pollution quite a bit (I couldn’t make out all the starts in Cassiopeia). It didn’t matter that much because I was mainly interested in the mechanics of the setup. It is heavy and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone with back problems. Assembling the base went quickly. After lifting the base piece out of my car I rolled to the setup location, so that wasn’t so bad from a weight standpoint. Putting the lower tube into place was a little more difficult because I leave the counterweights attached. Still was able to line up the fittings between the base and tube on my first try. The only non-captive bolt on the whole scope which locks the tube to the base took about five minutes to install. I had to shift the tube around a little before the holes lined up. The struts went on without any trouble. The upper tube is what took the longest. I suppose the main problem was trying to get the bolts and the holes to line up. It was twilight by this time and was mainly trying to do it by touch. I finally wised up, held a flashlight in my mouth and visually lined things up. That process took half the setup time, which was one hour. I’m sure I’ll get faster with practice.

Aligning the scope went quickly and the go-to was dead on for the rest of the evening. Using the 28mm wide field eyepiece that came with the scope I could see M32 for the first time. Went over to the Ring and it was quite visible in the eyepiece, even though it was close to the moon. Went to the blue snowball and could tell it was really blue. I went to the Pleiades with my 41mm Panoptic and they were exceptionally bright and distinct. I could see the Saturn nebula clearly with an 8mm Ethos. With the Ethos again I went to M15 and could clearly make out individual stars, no grey fuzzies. Overall, considering how bad the skies were, I was pretty impressed. I can’t wait to get it to some really dark skies!

Take down also took about an hour, including packing all the peripherals. I had trouble with a bolt on one of the struts. It didn’t want to turn. I got it out eventually but the retaining washer snapped off. I haven’t tried to reattach it yet.

Overall, it went pretty smoothly for a first time out. It was quite a workout for a couch potato like me. I’m a little sore today. Weather permitting I’ll be out again on Tuesday. I’ll see if I’m any faster then.