Zeiss-Telementor 63/840mm       Materials    A booklet (german)    A prospect (german)    english prospects What a lucky day... On tour with my wife I drove my car through Bremerhaven, northern Germany (you know, the great Elvis was there ...!!:-) ). And while driving past I saw a little optical shop called Photo-Schemkes. There stood a longish grey thing on a tripod with the well known blue colored clamps and the red knobs at the grey mount ... STOP! And back to the shop. This scope must be one from the well known german telescope-manufacture ... a Zeiss - Telementor! I asked the shopowner, Mr. Doerger, for this scope... how old, what eyepieces and natural for the price. Mr. Doerger said: "Its almost 10 years old but in god condition, because the previous owner didnt use the scope often". And the price...? I thought at 1200/1300 DM (550/600$). But as Mr. Doerger quoted the price, stopped my breath ... : He liked to get only 750 DM (~320$) for the complete Telementor. Immediately I took hold on the Telementor. Fortunately I could on the ATT 2001 in Essen acquire the original 7.5 x 42 original Zeissfinderscope for 200 more Marks (~ 90$). Accessoirs OTA with lenses "C" 63/840mm Mount "T" with 2.5 kg counterweight Tripod with clamps an slap for eyepieces etc. Eyepieces H-25 (34x) and O-16 (53x) Brush for cleaning Guide for use Nice would be an eyepiece with shorter focal length (maybe 8mm or 6mm focal length for higher magnifications) The quality of manufacture There is a cliche: "made in germany". Sometimes it is false, sometimes true. In that case it is real true! It does not clatter anything. The "zeiss-gray" tube with its internal focusing looks like new. It is not even an leight-weight thing, will be carried from the T-mount very well. The focusser is not a normal crayford or something like that. Rather it is a speciality: In the tube is a second one. This will during focussing in the "outer tube" moved. With that expensive mechanism you get your sharp images. A very good idea from the design engineers in the old GDR! Missing at the "normal" Telementor is a finder-scope. Instead of this, there are two metell pieces with round holes in it mounted on the tube. Viewing through both holes you can use this construction as an simple finder. The T-mount is - in coherence with the tube - very practically: With only two knobs you can fix the tube on the mount - fast and sure. A well known distinstctive mark from the zeiss mounts are the red knobs and the short calibration shaft ("oh look, a mount with the red knobs"). Here is a little negative feature of this mounts: You cannot calibrate "endless" with it. Rather you have only a delimited leeway. For more calibration, you must open the fix-knob, back of the calibration shaft, reorient the object and after this, you can go on. Here would be necessary an improvement. Apartfrom that the contruction is very practically, you can set up the Telementor in a few minutes. The eyepieces with their 24.5mm barrel will be inserted in a sleeve: slide in, focusing and you may start observing. Brillant solved is the mounting of the finderscope: you can screw off the little "eyepiece-tube". Then put the ring, where is the finder mounted, over the back end of the main-tube. After that screw tight the eyepiece-tube. Now you can spin the finder arond the main-tube. In all, the manuafacturing of the Telementor is highest quality. Merely the point with the calibration shaft is a little problem.