Anyone familiar with Mak-Cass's?

Hey guys, just for your information I'll forward the information from Guilherme de Almeida (considered an expert in all things Mak):

HI,

Russian Maksutovs are made slowly. Optical surfaces are carefully made at low
speed and very high quality.
So they produce very little (tipycally less than 1/7 wave built-in astgmatism on
the front wave. So the rotational position of mais mirror will not be an issue.
YOu will not detec any difference in optical quality.
Much more important is DO NOT overtight the holding ring that clamps the primary
mirror on its place. Be gentle when tightening: astigmatism is born here, by
ellastic deformation. If you see it, relax the tightening.

Best Regards
Guilherme de Almeida

Very promising.

Thats good news Martinus.
A number of us were out observing at the Burren last night and I had the mk67 with me, after spendsing a few mins collimating it, we got razor sharp images of saturn using a 7mm eyepiece with it, have you gone ahead and bought it yet ?

I did indeed Dave.

The scope is in excellent condition and star tests appear to be good (though I admit that I need to do more reading on this). I don't know what I should expect from the optics though.

well, expect pin point stars and airy rings when the seeing is good.
have a look at
www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=544
and
www.excelsis.com/1.0/entry/intes-micro-m...2f72ba2866708e6f8668

the view we had of saturn was razor sharp when we got good seeing at high powers.
one thing I did do though is ditch the crummy focuser, and had a custom adapter made so I can attach a meade microfocuser to the scope, does a far better job.
I also ditched the useless finder and got a red dot finder instead.

Thanks Dave, I'll have a look at those.
I've seen other examples of the '67 with a moonlite focuser but it seems like a hefty bit of kit to mount on such a small OTA.

I'm really happy with what I've seen thus far and it's a massive weight off my mind that I don't have to spend a significant amount of time collimating. I must say that the finder that came with my scope appears to be quite excellent. I have a red-dot finder that I'll probably attach as well but the finder has really sharp optics and the option to add an 'illuminator' to the reticle.

well, I suppose I'm very biased, I'm totally gone off magnifing finders in general.