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Howdy all. I'm always on the hunt for a better newtonian. I just discovered OOUK brand on telescopes.net website. I've have never heard anything about this brand, if you have, could you share your thoughts? They boast very impressive specifications. Thanks, Dan |
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Approach with caution. I have researched them a lot and have heard more bad than good. I also owned one of their 12" ultra grade f4 mirror that was designed poorly. The edge was not ground smooth, tapered and ridges as deep as a mm. It would shift around in the ONTC mirror cell and pop up against the clips due to the tapered edge which I tried to rectify with a custom aurora precision mirror cell to no avail. I shouldn't have to fix their problems. They are the engineers and should test their equipment prior. I personally WILL never buy from them again as there are many better out there. Google "oouk mirrors" read some of the many threads and make your own decision. |
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I'll second what Matthew said above. I have 2 of them, the 10" custom made to spec and the 12" was their original production line. The 10" sports a very good mirror as do to a lesser extent the 12". The original 3-point mirror cells was good enough for these lightweight mirrors but the same problem with the flank of the 12" prevents it to sit tightly in the cell. I also bought their 9-point cell for the 12" but in fact made thing even worse (so I reverted back to the 3-point as gives better performance and it is a deal lighter). The 10" it's a f/6.3 for planetary observation and imaging so whether it sits tight in its cell or not is probably irrelevant but it is worth to note that the mirror flanks are flat so I expect an overall better experience for deep sky imaging. Customer service is rather customer-repellent in the sense you are repelled by the way they treat you. I had also a rather bad experience with their coating services. As Matthew said, approach with caution at minimum or avoid completely for a safer bet. If you want good quality look no further than ONTC line by TS. |
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andrea tasselli: * Just make sure you don't get a oouk mirror like I did with my ONTC 😂 can't go wrong with GSO. I have owned 9 GSO mirrors and 8 have been good. |
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Matthew Proulx: Agreed. Make sure if you go that route to avoid those mirrors. Their cells are otherwise good (and better than OOUKs) . |
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| ONTC or Lacerta Newtonians |
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Yuexiao Shen: AFAIK they do not make them anymore, which is quite sad. |
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andrea tasselli:Yuexiao Shen: They do. Actually I just emailed them in the last 2 days and help my friend place an order, which has a half year leading time. You need to direct contact them. They have a long customer list Yuexiao |
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| Thanks for the head-up. I'll contact them but half year waiting is a tad too long... |
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| In this hobby, everything I purchased has a long leading time or service time. As long as there is some equipment in use and producing images, I can work on the next project |
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Thanks everyone for the info. I will avoid this company. Bummer though, the scopes I want are unattainable, CCA-250, AG Optical. Dan |
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Dan Brown: CCA-250 is a dream scope. We luckily got it used and it spent 1 year in Japan, haha Yuexiao |
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I have recently bought from OOUK on of the new newtonian series called IDEAL, ordered the first day of august 2023 an IDEAL8L with the improved quality in the mirrors upgrade to 1/10PV. I received it the last week of December 2023, so 5 months later, when it was supposed to be ready to be shipped at the end of october. I confirm that the customer service is probably one of the worst that i ever had to deal with in my entire life in any business type not just astronomy. The telescope came with an optical test report with a reported Strehl of 0.99, which i find non trustable since they have been discovered in the past altering these reports, they claimed it was a new employee's fault and he was fired... sounds fishy so you should trust the report like you trust your government **beware** The mirror had a small scatch in the center, it doesn't seem to affect the output of the images, since it's located in the zone covered by the central obstruction but still, if i pay extra for better quality mirror, this should not happen, there should be a better cq. I also found out that the screw holes for the secondary support spider are not perfectly spaced from each other so the secondary holder doesn't sit in the center of the tube. I tried to align it adjusting the spider vanes but this leads to have badly bent spider vanes with terrible diffraction spikes, so if you want straight spikes the secondary has to sit sligthly off-center unless i drill new holes in the correct position. The focuser is a tad better then skywatcher focusers, but it's not very smooth and the thin aluminium tube tends to bend under the imaging train load around the focuser (which was expected). At the end of the day i will probably never buy from them again and i advise to expect a few issues if you plan to buy from them. |
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Hi guys, I was planning to buy from them an ODK 12”, any feedback on this OTA? thanks Stefano |
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| What is NOT good for the goose isn't good for the gander, to paraphrase. In time I read horrible stories on the quality of the hardware and the overall responsiviness of their (anti-) customer service. I have no idea what is the situation now but I'm not bracing for a storm of good news either. Maybe buying through an intermediary (TS) could allay some fears? |
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I'll share my personal (limited) experience with OOUK, as an owner of a scope that was once their entry level 8 inch newtonian: the VX8. My scope came out of collimation, which isn't really a surprise or something to be upset about when ordering a newtonian from thousands of kilometers away. The main problem is that it was in fact impossible to collimate properly with the way it was set up. I could not get the secondary mirror far enough under the focuser to be fully central - there just wasn't enough room with the collimation screws until the mirror just drops out. I was very new at the hobby but even i was able to tell that its not supposed to be like that. So one of 3 things must have happened, or a combination of all of them. 1) They accidentally used collimation screws that are too short, making collimation of the secondary impossible, 2) They drilled the mounting holes for the secondary spider too far up the tube, 3) The focuser hole was drilled too low in the tube. Whatever the reason for this, there is actually a bigger problem. That problem is that anyone who has ever seen a collimated newtonian secondary mirror can tell that the scope is impossible to collimate. So either nobody checked - in which case there is absolutely no quality control at the factory so who knows what else is wrong with the scope? Or, alternatively, someone did check but didn't care that they made an impossible to collimate scope and still shipped it - in which case they really dont care about their customers or their products. The third option is that somebody did check, but didn't understand the issue - in which case they are morons and shouldn't be let within 5m of a telescope. So, no matter how you look at this actually very easy to fix problem (i fixed my scope with longer collimation screws - 10 cents) you get the sense that they either dont know what they are doing or dont care about what they are doing, both of which is a terrible option. My choice is to vote with my wallet - contents of which shall never be sent towards OOUK again. |
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Over the past many years, I thought about getting an OOUK scope several times. They look good on paper, don't they? Then I google around to find user feedbacks. Every time I did it, it was like watching a horror movie. I waited for a couple years and checked again to see if they improved. No. New horror stories show up. I don't have 1st-hand experience to share. All I can say based on everything I saw is that, don't buy from them. At least don't buy directly. Maybe buying from a reputable dealer can work. |
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Hi all, I have an ODK 14" that is working fine now with a full frame camera ASI2400 BUT it was a big battle during a couple of years with us and I was obliged to send it back two times because there was a big coma and astigmatism , no respect of the field of view etc.... When I received it last time it was perfect but no clear explanation from OOUK why the scope works fine now and the FOV is OK...!! They just told me that there was an error since the begining of the distance adjustment from the primary to secondary mirror... LOL So take care both... Patrick |
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| OOUK is related to Orion Optics UK? |
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| Yes |
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| Re yesss... |
