I started this project to see if I could make a cheap Newtonian good and avoid the high price of a premium scope. I had no illusions of making it AS GOOD as a premium, but good. I figured if it went well I'd gain knowledge as well as have a dedicated Newt for use in my backyard (I normally image at a dark site). I'll spare you the long tale of fiddling, research, and frustration but in the end these are the things I had to do to improve the scope..

1. Longer secondary mirror collimation screws. As expected when the telescope arrived the secondary was not centered under the stock focuser. No big deal, I have a sight tube. Except I quickly found that I was unable to center the mirror because the 35mm screws were too short to make contact with the mirrors new position. Had to replace with 45mm M4 screws. 

I also found I'm not a big fan of the sight tube for secondary centering and eventually bought a concenter eyepiece which works way better in my opinion. 


2. 2.5" Moonlite CSL focuser with 1" travel. The stock focuser was surprisingly decent but still tilted under the weight of my QHY268M and filter wheel. The base of the Moonlite was a few millimeters wider than the stock base so I used a metal file to widen the holes and of course had to re-center the secondary. The Moonlite also required the 2.5" extension to reach focus. If I had gotten the 2" travel the 1.25" or 1.75" extensions would have worked.

I also attached a Pegasus Astro FocusCube2 motor instead of buying the Moonlite motor because I had it sitting around. 


3. Light proof rear of tube. No surprise here, my backyard is bright and data was unusable with so much light entering past the primary mirror cell. Currently I have it masked off with a few layers of tin foil but eventually I'll make a nicer looking mask out of blackout cloth. 



I'm pretty happy with the end result especially since this is only an hour and a half of data from B7 sky during a full moon. The stars look decent across the whole field and scope holes collimation throughout the night including through meridian flip. Cant ask for much more. I may paint the inside of the tube a darker black in the future to further guard against stray light. I think this will be a nice home obs scope and will complement the custom scope I ordered to take into the field well.