OOUK Telescopes

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.

andrea tasselli:
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.

* 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.

ONTC or Lacerta Newtonians

andrea tasselli:

Yuexiao Shen:
Lacerta Newtonians

AFAIK they do not make them anymore, which is quite sad.

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

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

Dan Brown:
Thanks everyone for the info. I will avoid this company. Bummer though, the scopes I want are unattainable, CCA-250, AG Optical.
Dan

CCA-250 is a dream scope. We luckily got it used and it spent 1 year in Japan, haha

Yuexiao

Hi guys, 

I was planning to buy from them an ODK 12”, any feedback on this OTA?

thanks Stefano

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.

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

Yes