Open Consignment Auction - Wed. (11/2/22) 5:30PM Closed (#9880255)

First of all, the 4000 is all cast and machined aluminum - the only plastic on it is the front lens cover (which is a nice sliding fit with a handy finger grip). It comes packed in a fitted plastic carry case with room for the scope, base and various accessories. The overall look is rugged/handsome, particularly if you are taken with the gold on black motif.
It is a typical dual fork design supporting the OTA with outriggers fixed onto the rear cell. The OTA can be removed simply by undoing 4 Allen key cap screws and then the OTA can be mounted onto a standard photo tripod via the included ‘foot’. The OTA itself only weighs about 2 lbs so even light duty tripod could be used to support it.. The 4000’s were reported to have had a perfectly useless 4x20mm finder which was missing from my unit. The screws are still there so perhaps I’ll put a red dot finder on it. The long 1200mm focal length really requires a finder of some sort.
There are slo mo controls, locks and large diameter setting circles on both axis.
The base of the dual forks rides in two ball bearing races. Declination slo mo is through the traditional tangent arm with a wide degree of movement. It is smooth and positive. The RA axis has the typical slo mo knob and a separate RA lock knob. The RA is driven at the sidereal rate by a 110Vac synchronous motor in the base.
It comes with three legs that thread into the base to convert it to equatorial mode, which sounds a lot neater than it actually proves to be in use. There is no substitute for a good tripod to bring things up to eyeball height. Perched atop a cheapo EQ2 aluminum tripod, it is a sturdy and vibration free setup.
The optics are housed in finely machined and anodised aluminum cells. The focusing is via the typical moving mirror method, and the focuser is smooth with only a hint of backlash. There is no image shift on my example.