Hi Jeremy,

Hi Jeremy,

I've got some info about the wheelbarrow handles and the need for a dolly here:??

hope that helps some.??

-jeff

Learning a lot from reading the posts here!

I recently placed an order for a UC18; expecting delivery sometime in November.?? I did have two questions which maybe the group can help with:

1. Dave K. told me ServoCAT is out of business, so no Go-To options at present, and nothing on the immediate horizon.? But I saw something from Gary at Wildcard about a possible new drive system designed to interface with Argo Navis.? This was around January, but I've heard nothing since (and Dave says he knows nothing more than that).? Has anybody heard anything more?

I was weighing whether to delay purchasing the scope until a new Go-To system was available, but who knows how long that will be. I see a lot of the big Dob manufacturers, and big mirror grinders, have gone out of business in the last few years, so I figure it's a good idea to get my hands on a proven optical/mechanical system now, and I can always retrofit a drive system later.

2. I'd be interested in making the wheelbarrow handles collapsible, which would make storage and transport much easier. (Of course they have to be removed entirely for observing, but for storage in my basement closet and transport in my car it would be a lot easier if I could simply remove or stow away the handle extensions, while leaving the first part connected to the scope.) Has anyone successfully done this?? I think I've sketched out in my head how to do it, but as always it's nicer to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own :-)

Best,

Jeremy


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Jeremy P. Carlo
jcarlo@...


Cell: (917) 612-2163
Work: (610) 519-3279

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Mark Bungart on 8/16/2022: To flame others who have had similar experiences to mine is insulting and sophomoric. Be better than that. ?

Richard Miller on 8/14/2022: I doubt that a group of enthusiasts and satisfied customers will be persuaded to join your cause if they have not been denied the customer service, or warranty repair or a refund from the supplier of the defective product. ?

J Molin on 8/17/2022: I respect your opinion and so do others. But, for me, seeing your inputs over a number of years on every related forum (and your communication with fellow astronomers we have encountered in common) that the Obsession UC 22 is the worst telescope ever and no one should ever buy/own one is very disappointing.

Richard on 8/18/2022: i purchased my UC18 without the ServoCAT and later installed it my self. ?Very happy customer, and have added lots of extras to achieve remote observing from inside my house. ?

Mark Bungart on 8/16/2022: All I know is that my Obsession has been the best purchase Ive ever made, nothing comes close tho my Honda snowblower is a distant second :)?

Frédéric Ruciak on 8/18/2022: And the views are ... wow. So we can argue endlessly about the value of the scopes and what you expected for that price. On my own when I look at the price of a very good 22' mirror, AN / SC, ?I found that the value of the total integrated scope is very good :-). I am very rational about my buying choices and I do not regret a moment to have let my scopes travel the ocean to land in my garage in France. I understand that you are disappointed, just consider that your experience might not reflect the one of many others who are satisfied without being stupid fans ;-)

Bob on 8/20/2022: I’ve logged more hours on the 18UC in the past 15 years than all other scopes that I’ve ever owned, combined.??I’ve seen thousands of deep sky objects with it.??On those rare nights where seeing wasn't the limiting factor, I’ve had the best views of Jupiter and Saturn that I’ve ever seen.? Amortizing the cost of the 18UC over 15 years, it may be the most economical scope I’ve ever owned as well.? Of all the scopes that I’ve purchased over the years, the OBSESSION UC18, while not perfect, is hands down THE BEST TELESCOPE that I have ever owned.

Mark Bungart on 8/16/2022: Dave has sold over a thousand Obsessions of various sizes since Obsession 1 was first designed. Clearly people love his scopes. Dave has typically been very responsive to customer issues and my own personal experience with Dave backs that up. Ive owned my Obsession 15 for 20 yrs now without a single mechanical issue or failure.? From my experience, Dave is a stand up guy and provides great support.?

Richard Miller on 8/14/2022:? After my 2 star alignment last night I set the Argo Navis to 'From Planetaruim" and retired to my recliner to "remote into" the telescope computer.? My UC18 dob "system" then sat out on my deck in range of my wifi and performed flawlessly powered over 8 hours by a 55 amp hour battery.? The ServoCAT and powered ground board provide the rotating power contacts and motion control with perfect interaction with Argo Navis.? Mallincam gets it power through these rotating contacts.? There is something very satisfying about all these systems working together to give me this remote observing capability from a dob.

Frédéric Ruciak on 8/18/2022: If we concentrate on UC22 that you are very disappointed with, I choose from the ordering to ask for single piece altitude bearings to avoid what I suspected to be some potential problems with foldable ones and I added some washers between the VMB and the side bearings to handle the slack that I had between the VMB and the rocker. Having done that during the initial assembly of my scope, I am very happy with it. Yes it is not as smooth as the classic design but I have AN/SC so it is not so important to me. The collimation holds from low altitude to zenith with some marginal difference I have always noted from all big scopes that I had the opportunity to compare with at star parties. Pointing and tracking works well, no issues with the altitude cable. What was most important to me is that I can put my UC22 in a standard space wagon and drive to my preferred rural dark spot and assemble/disassemble it alone.?

Bob on 8/20/2022: I wouldn't characterize the design tradeoffs of the UC as "problems".??Those are the features that differentiate the UC from other big dobs, and make it what it is - light, highly portable, easy to load in a car, and easy to set up and tear down in the field.?

I’m sorry to hear about the trouble with your scope.??I can't argue with your assessment of the design tradeoffs made to the UC line.??I just wouldn't characterize those tradeoffs as "problems".??Those are the features that differentiate the UC from other big dobs, and make it what it is - light, highly portable, easy to load in a car, and easy to set up and tear down when in the field.??

I have to drive at least an hour to get to clear, dark skies.??I’ve been doing this for over 20 years with all variety of scopes.??I’ve learned by experience that the heavier the scope and the more difficult it is to set up, the less it will get used after that new car smell wears off.??

When I purchased the 18UC nearly 15 years ago, I did so fully understanding these tradeoffs and willingly accepted them in order to get a light bucket that was highly portable and easy to set up and tear down.??There was no shortage of honest reviews back then, when I was researching this scope. It was because of the many reviews provided by users that I chose not to add a Servocat to this scope.??However, I did choose to add the digital encoders and Argo Navis.??This allows the 18UC to work extremely efficiently as a "push-to" scope.??No servo-cat required.?

I bought special collimation tools to help quickly align the scope after it is set up, something that has to be done every time.??I got very proficient at it.? I'd even re-collimate during a session if needed. ?It only takes a minute. ?Only rarely did collimation issues limit my ability to use the scope visually.??

I’ve logged more hours on the 18UC in the past 15 years than all other scopes that I’ve ever owned, combined.??I’ve seen thousands of deep sky objects with it.??On those rare nights where seeing wasn't the limiting factor, I’ve had the best views of Jupiter and Saturn that I’ve ever seen. Ad nauseam...

Amortizing the cost of the 18UC over 15 years, it may be the most economical scope I’ve ever owned as well.

Bob

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Dave designs and manufactures his own scopes.? He has successfully run his own US-based company for decades while competing in a global market place that is dominated by low-cost, off-shore manufacturers who sometimes copy US designs and sell them back to us at lower cost.? How many people can do what Dave has done?? Dave is a great American.

Go read any forum about any piece of gear (astro-related or otherwise) and there will always be complaints about the product being a complete piece of garbage.? Some of these posts are legit, some are placed by competitors, some by internet trolls, and some are posted by complete nut jobs.? But even the legit complaints are usually outliers.? All sane and saavy buyers will read a couple of “one star” complaints and recognize them for what they are.

None of the dozen or so telescopes that I have purchased in the past 50 years has worked flawlessly right out of the box, and as the scopes have gotten more complex and more expensive, the problems have gotten worse.? Back in the day (at least in my experience), most problems were mechanical in nature, but the worst problems tended to be intractible (bad optics for example).? Not much the average buyer (me) could do about a bad mirror or lens, unless you could get the vendor or mfg to agree that it was bad.? These days, the optics have gotten much better, but now the problems have to do with electronics, cables, connectors, motors, power, etc.? Although I will point out that I bought a highly regarded and popular 5” refractor from a respectable vendor about 8 years ago that was delivered with several screws rattling around loose in the box - having worked themselves loose during shipping across the Pacific.? So we’re still having mechanical issues too.

There was a time when I too felt agrieved by this state of affairs, but it has occurred to me that if these products were all flawless, I probabaly would not be able to afford any of them, the market for these products would be much smaller (catering only to wealthy customers), and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Of all the scopes that I’ve purchased over the years, the OBSESSION UC18, while not perfect, is hands down THE BEST TELESCOPE that I have ever owned. ?Thank you, Dave.

Bob

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Hi all,
for those interested in design details, I would like to share with you a small but very important difference between classic design and UC design regarding the position of the collimation screws on the upper (according to position at zenith) and lower bar of the mirror cell.
Maybe you noticed that for UC, the upper bar has only one collimation screw whereas there are two for classic design and vice versa for the lower bar.
According to the mechanical engineer who designed the ?, the upper bar will be slightly more deformed at zenith than the lower bar because of the two spaced anchor points of the collimation screws at the lower bar. This will induce a mirror cell looking slightly at the back of the scope at zenith. Let us suppose that you collimate in this position, when the scope points at horizon, this effect on the primary cel will vanish (the primary is essentially carried by the sling) but another effect will compensate ie the flexure of the truss tube that will displace the secondary in the same direction, keeping the respective position of the two mirrors more or less unchanged. In the case of the classic design where the upper bar has two collimation screws, the two effects add. In the example of the cruxis telescope (a 1m diameter telescope) the computation shows that the two effects nearly compensate perfectly.
What is interesting here is that Dave K. changed the design (on purpose?) and that UC that have longer truss tubes with more flexure at low altitudes offer some natural compensation of the flexure with the specific position of the collimation screws on the mirror cell bars.?I am curious to know whether Dave K. decided to adapt the design on purpose or for another reason like the fact that this two collimation screws on the lower bar need less clearance when the VMB moves in the rocker box.

Regarding collimation, I am convinced that the UC22 with 8 truss tubes offering a strong anchor point almost below the focuser on the single ring UTA shows a better resistance to the flexure of the UTA when you move from horizon to zenith compared to the 6 truss tubes design of the UC18. I have a UC22 and a classic 15 (with short truss tubes) and I do not notice significant difference among the two scopes regarding to collimation stability between horizon and zenith.
Useless (as we do not build telescopes) but interesting to me and I hope some of you.?

Clear skies Frédéric.

Clear skies, Frédéric

Frederic,

i purchased my UC18 without the ServoCAT and later installed it my self. ?Very happy customer, and have added lots of extras to achieve remote observing from inside my house. ?I plan to also truck my system to many dark sites once I retire from work. ?

you do have to be careful with the task of making the pivot hole larger to support the powered ground board—which I eventually ?got right. ?Not for the faint of heart or inexperienced wood worker.

I did have my cable come off the bearing until I simply modified my tension spring. ?Perfect operation for the last couple of years. ?I have so much anticipation for weekends with clear skies and a new moon it is a true delight. ?I only use my Mallincam and view from my recliner on my big screen TV. ?

Customer Service or technical service of complicated systems via email or phone is a huge challenge. ?I do hope Jeffery got his ServoCAT working to his satisfaction and still would like to hear how he resolved the issues.

Richard

Hi Jeff,
the fact is that my experience with a classic 15 and the very first UC22 AN/SC is completely different from yours and it is very good to excellent. If we concentrate on UC22 that you are very disappointed with, I choose from the ordering to ask for single piece altitude bearings to avoid what I suspected to be some potential problems with foldable ones and I added some washers between the VMB and the side bearings to handle the slack that I had between the VMB and the rocker. Having done that during the initial assembly of my scope, I am very happy with it. Yes it is not as smooth as the classic design but I have AN/SC so it is not so important to me. The collimation holds from low altitude to zenith with some marginal difference I have always noted from all big scopes that I had the opportunity to compare with at star parties. Pointing and tracking works well, no issues with the altitude cable. What was most important to me is that I can put my UC22 in a standard space wagon and drive to my preferred rural dark spot and assemble/disassemble it alone. And the views are ... wow. So we can argue endlessly about the value of the scopes and what you expected for that price. On my own when I look at the price of a very good 22' mirror, AN / SC, ?I found that the value of the total integrated scope is very good :-). I am very rational about my buying choices and I do not regret a moment to have let my scopes travel the ocean to land in my garage in France. I understand that you are disappointed, just consider that your experience might not reflect the one of many others who are satisfied without being stupid fans ;-)

clear skies, Frederic

On Sun, Aug 14, 2022 at 10:38 PM, Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky wrote:

Then DO NOT buy from Obsession. Because the dentist ignores complaints or tries to pass them off to subcontractors. Yeah It's been 5 years or more. And never once has he admitted he, or whoever built my UC-22, screwed it up.?

No worries, I fixed his screw ups. Just sad that he never ever owned up to it.?

?

It's like you buy a BMW, the A/C fails in the first month, and BMW says "Sorry, contact the compressor manufacturer for help!"?

?

Jeff …

I bought my UC 22 with Servocat Drive and Argo Navis in 2015. I have used it extensively. I can identify with your some of your inputs/problems and empathize with your experience. I did make a number of modifications (Markless cable stop altitude drive, oblong mirror cell guides [keep mirror from moving side to side], additional VMB guides [limit movement from torque of altitude drive], removed powered ground board connection, installed lithium battery connection in rocker box, and modified rocker box to ground board pads to improve performance. This was definitely more modification involvement than previous truss Newtonians I have owned. But, every truss Newtonian I’ve owned required tweeking and/or some minor modifications. I guess for the relative portability and price I paid compared to other 22” options at the time I accepted the ATM work required. I can understand where others might not.

I always transport/move it using wheel barrow handles and ramps with the altitude cable and altitude encoder bracket always attached (I do not attempt to lift the mirror and VMB into place). I never have a problem with the altitude cable coming off during transport or in use. I have used the telescope with both the Argo Navis and Nexus coupled with the Servocat. The telescope tracks well (no problem doing EAA with a Mallincam) and all speeds/movements of the hand control work well. For my telescope, accurate GoTo performance with the telescope requires using MPoint(Nexus) or TPAS(Argo) correction. Both MPoint and TPAS work well with objects over most of the sky well within the FOV of a 17mm Ethos eyepiece. I have now reverted back to using the Argo Navis because it allows storing persistent mount errors and synching after the model is in place (At this time, Nexus MPoint does not allow this). I saved ECES and Collimation error data which is persistent). So, after the initial 2 star alignment, I only do a 4 star TPAS calculation(IE) taking 10-15 minutes for accurate GoTo performance across the sky. The collimation holds well from the zenith to low altitudes.

I admit the UC 22 is not the best telescope out there and that DK could improve the design and probably provide better support … But, overall, I feel mine is a very good telescope … the optics are very good and the telescope performs consistently well. Over my 7 years of ownership, I have observed thousands of objects with it and continue to use it without problem. My impression/experience with the UC 22 is different than yours. Of course, I respect your opinion and so do others. But, for me, seeing your inputs over a number of years on every related forum (and your communication with fellow astronomers we have encountered in common) that the Obsession UC 22 is the worst telescope ever and no one should ever buy/own one is very disappointing. I have no immediate intention of doing so, but, I feel you may have made it almost impossible for me to ever sell my UC 22.

Just my input/feelings … Jim

?

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OK, try to understand a couple of things - Im not at all interested in a flame war:

--
Mark Bungart
15" Obsession #643 / Swayze mirror
Grove City, Ohio