telescope with exceptional value for money

Firstly I would like to thank Martin & the FLO team.
Great advice & customer service second to none.
After hours n hours of reading short tube refractor reviews I had narrowed it down to two...
The William Optics z61 and the evostar 72.
Both scopes had good and bad reviews of which left me scratching my head again.
The z61 has fpl53 glass the ed72 unknown
The ed72 has wider aperture
Both scopes seem to have issues with coreect flatener spacer with Dslr connected
The z61 was considerably more including the flatener and eos adaptor.

Took the gamble I went with the ed72.
As promised it arrived the next day.
Coming from a Dslr and lenses back ground I was slightly worried about my first practice runs with the scope.
Firstly I spent an afternoon balancing the scope on the star adventurer and practicing with the focuser.
That evening I set about focusing on stars, without a mask or focus aid via apt on the laptop.
The stars looked via the 450d live view so I shot off a dozen 60s exposures of m45.
On Dslr playback the frames looked good in photoshop they were shocking,unusable.
The next evening I went with laptop and homemade bahtinov mask.
The night before I did mark the draw tube as focus reference point, attaching the mask and watching focus aid on the laptop I was stunned at just how far my focus was.
Nailing focus with the mask and apt was simple so I turned to m45 once again and fired off test frames.
Checking the Dslr play back and apt preview I was confident.
A single framed looked good in photoshop so I stacked the dozen in dss and wow wow wow.
My nikon 180 f2 Ed is sharp but the 72ed simply blew it away. Perfect stars from edge to, hardly in CA, bloat or colour fringing.
Conclusion.
Am I happy? Oh yes indeed
Would I recommend this scope? Without a doubt
Would I recommend FLO? I ain't ever shopping elsewhere again

I don't usually make reviews, but when I do, it's because I'm very impressed! I'm not an expert but with less than 20min integration on a star adventurer in polluted sky, I took my best orion nebula ever, with colours and details never saw before with normal dslr lenses. The service from FLO was really fast and accurate and the OVL field flattener seems to work great on this tube. https://www.astrobin.com/393042/0/

For its price, it really is an impressive piece of equipment, really easy to carry in a bag, I use it with my star adventurer, and living in Mexico city (which is heavilly light poluted), I found this setup really travel friendly, the glasses quallity is really good, almost no CA, and very good double focuser. The only thing I quite dislike, is the two screws to hold the Optical train, It should have some copper strip or something, so it doesn´t touch directly on the Flattener or Camera adapter.
I am really impressed with the personal attention I got from FLO´s Grant, who really helped me all the way, from the ellection of the Field flattener, the shipping to Mexico, etc. Really grateful for everything.

Not my first purchase from FLO, who I've always found to be spot on with both the goods and services they supply and their customer service.
This doublet refractor comes very well packed in the aluminium case, which is also well packed in its own right. I've not had chance to get out and use it yet, but first appearance it seems to be well made and solid, weighing in at just shy of 2kg. I like the fact that it doesn't have the 1.25" conversion for the focuser. The supplied one that's fitted is nice and smooth with a snug movement and no play, even with a DSLR body attached. The dew shield cover is of the screw on variety, meaning it's not going to fall off anytime soon. The dovetail is perhaps a little short but this is far from a deal breaker. Overall it's a very nice piece of kit that I can't wait to get out with. If the glass is as good quality as the rest of this, then I'm in for a treat 😊

I bought this to use as a guide scope with a ZWO 290 mono.. It's probably a bit OTT as a guide scope and I would happily use it as a wide field imaging/visual scope. For the money its very well made - the focuser is smooth and slop free and the focus lock works very well and doesn't shift the image when tightened. The box it is sent in is a nice touch and protects the scope well - with a little surgery to the foam it will take the scope with camera attached for storage over the off season. My only niggle is the screw on dust cap - it's a right faff in the dark and I would much prefer a plastic push fit one. Performance wise its excellent - tight focus is easy the image snaps in and out beautifully - a quick test on the moon reveals almost no CA. For guiding with a ZWO290 it presents an incredible number of tight stars to choose from and guided consistently at about 0.5" total RMS on a well loaded Avalon Fast Reverse with zero issues. Just one thing to be aware of for anyoone wanting to use this as a guide scope - it took 110mm on extension rings to achieve focus !!! That said the FLO T2 adapter allows the creation of an all screw together system to prevent any slop in the system which was one of the main drivers for me to buy this scope and camera combination.

Very useful and practical telescope for it's price.

After much deliberation, I decided to go ahead pressed 'enter' - my 72ED was on it's way. I wanted a scope that I could literally get outside at a moments notice - that it is had to be able to be carried with its' mount in one hand, and be able to travel with me anywhere I wanted to take it. The 72ED was selected from a list of several similar apertures up to 80mm.

I ordered the scope to be delivered on Saturday last. As it turned out, unusually for me I was still asleep at 8.05am when the FedEx man came calling and didn't hear him knock. Even more unusually, my wife was up before me and able to take delivery! Poured with rain all day Saturday and I couldn't even take the scope outside. Rained all Sunday morning until just before lunch when I was able to get outside for a short time under a hazy sun to try it out. Some superbly lit House Sparrows sitting on a hedge about 30 feet away gave some jaw-droopingly sharp views of every feather and plumage detail, fabulous contrast and wonderfully saturated colours. I was on the way to being hooked. Then it started to rain again.

Monday brightened by lunchtime, just as I was getting ready for work, and it was forecast to be a frosty night - and I wouldn't finish work until after 10pm. Left work and rushed to the car at 10.30pm to discover a hard frost had descended and my key wouldn't open any of the frozen doors. Eventually I managed to get the tail gate open, push down one of the rear seats, crawl over it and force the drivers door open - phew. First light beckoned.

Twelve miles later as I drove into the village I thought it was rather dark, and just round the corner from my house there were lots of flashing orange lights, a noisy generator, some noisy workmen and a big trench! Entering the house I found out why, there had been a power cut - how lucky. Never had I changed my clothes and got a scope set. up outside so quickly - especially by torch-light. The frosty weather hadn't got to Oakworth yet, but there were some breaks, with superb transparency and 6th mag or better skies to boot, it reminded me of Kelling. By chasing the gaps I had wonderful views of the Orion Neb, double-cluster, the Auriga open clusters and any available star field, most memorable was the area around the dble cluster, Perseus and Cass. All the views surpassed anything I expected in a scope a tad short of three inches, all be it in unusually good conditions. I did a star test and was satisfied to see perfectly circular out-of-focus star image, and lovely tiny airy disks and diffraction rings in-focus. This session was about an hour old when cloud closed in - and then the power came back on, bye bye Kelling.

After three hours sleep I woke up at 6.15am Tuesday morning, and through the frosted bathroom window I could make out the waning crescent Moon and Venus to its right. Out again and set up by 6.30am Now a chilly frost in Oakworth, and the wonderful vista of the Moon, Venus and Spica in a row low in the E sky. A superb sight. I used a Baader Mk111 zoom with the dedicated x2.25 barlow to give me a maximum of x120 at the 8mm zoom setting. Excellent transparency to start with and seeing on the poor side. Nevertheless, the Moon and Venus were beyond what I was expecting, particularly Venus. At twenty degrees altitude and x120, Venus showed a wonderful sharp crescent, very much resembling the Moon's phase. This was what I was hoping to see, a view very reminiscent of the excellent views of Venus I have seen many times over the years using the range of SW ED doublets using FPL53 glass. In focus there was little to no colour other than that most likely accounted for by the low altitude of the planet (20 degrees) and atmospheric turbulence. Outside focus there was also surprisingly little colour. I was enjoying the view so much I forgot about the telescope for a few minutes. I also did some more star tests with stars at higher altitude than a few hours earlier, with the same results. At 7am I had to drag myself, and the telescope reluctantly indoors to take my wife to work. What an eventful first light I had had.

Some Details

The Crayford focuser, on my scope at least. is excellent - it isn't the same as the one used on the other SW ED doublets. Out of the box it was adjusted perfectly for my needs. I did my usual 'gentle pull' test, and it didn't budge - no slippage at all. I pulled a little harder than usual and still no slippage. Extremely smooth movement, in be both coarse and fine focus. The focus knobs are large and easily used by gloved hands. This focuser is better than I have used on any other of their ED doublets.

The dew shield is gloss white, I like it. It is threaded to accept the metal screw on lens cap. An improvement on plastic ones that slip off easily, though I would like it to be a less fine threaded, but that might be my less than nimble fingers. Still an improvement though. The dew cap can be pulled off if you need the scope to be even shorter.

The two inch fitting is not a compression type, but uses two screws. It didn't bother me, but then I'm not an imager and likely to hang heavy things off the end of the tube, and I have added a 35mm extension to accommodate my focus needs which has a compression fitting anyway. I guess many people will want to change the original fitting.

You may need to use an extension tube of some length to focus some of your eyepieces. I haven't got a two inch diagonal, and I suspect if you have one then you may not have need of anything else. When doing some tests on the day the scope I arrived, through an upstairs bedroom window, I first put in my Baader prism diagonal and I couldn't get focus any further away than around 50 feet! Not enough in-focus. I then put on a 2 inch long extension tube in front of the Baader prism, and I then couldn't get a focus anywhere! Luckily I remembered I had a 35mm extension tube in my Mak-Newt and I tried that. That fixed any focusing issues, though for some eyepieces I have only 2/3mm in-focus to spare. All this is no real issue, just be aware you may have to try a couple of things. Perhaps not if you use a 2inch diagonal anyway.

Because of the light weight and short tube, the 72ED could be mounted on just about anything. Even on a photo tripod with a photographic pan and tilt head if you only want to use it as a spotting scope. It works very well on my Manfrotto 393 gimbal (fork) head and sturdy photographic tripod.. I used this rig for my first light adventures. I will also use it on my AZ4.

Remember, it doesn't come with a finder, diagonal or any eyepieces, so allow for the cost of these if you need them. (can be picked up easily on the used market much cheaper)

Summary.

I admit it, I am smitten by this little scope. Sharp contrasty images, nicely saturated colours, no objectionable CA (to my eyes at least), lightweight, compact, take it anywhere, good for imaging (using field flattener if you do this sort of thing), usable as a telephoto lens and spotting scope for daytime use. Yes. it's not that big, buy it's only a few mm smaller than a three inch refractor which in my younger years any astronomer would be pleased to own. Bigger isn't always better - especially if you can't take it with you!
All this for £265 which includes a well made sturdy aluminium case with room for some accessories - what's not to like?! Little more than 1/3 of the price of some expensive eyepieces.
Yes, in my view, taking into account it's quality, price and flexibility of use, this little scope is in a class of its own.

an excellent scope that i bought for astrophotogrphy great price and fantastic results perfect starter scope and excellent staff

A great scope for the money, with some niggles that come from the price point.

1. Focuser travel is 39mm so keep in mind that using a 2" diagonal and 2" barlow will not allow one to reach focus - I use a 1.25" barlow element to overcome this.

2. Finderbase is set at 10 o'clock which makes it a bit awkward to use with a RDF - just rotate the scope in the rings to rotate the finderbase along with the scope.

3. Dovetail is short and does not extend further back from the rings to allow for better balancing - not a serious issue for my AVX as it is very light.

With these niggles out of the way, it is a great performer on the moon and DSO with truly negligible CA and it is extremely good looking. Not only are the views through the scope good, but the scope looks good too.

The case is really handy to store the scope and accessories and fairly lightweigh to boot.

The best part: I have no idea what SkyWatcher did, but the focuser is buttery smooth. I have two feathertouch focusers on other scopes and this one is pretty close in smoothness and holds a 2" diagonal and eyepiece with no problems whatsoever!.

Scope is travel friendly at 42cm length, dew shield can be removed to reduce travel length even further and for terrestrial viewing, focuses from 8 meters on.