In 2007 my interest for astronomy woke up again and I did build an observatory and put in a 12" Meade RCX400. This instrument had an extremly fine optics but the mount and its electronic was a disaster. One night, after restarting and re-aligning again after another system failure i decided that my life is too short for loosing half the clear nights with correcting faults. Here in Denmark we only have in average 50 nights clear night skies.
So what now? First I needed a sturdy mount so I bought a Paramount ME. This mount has a 15 years track record with satisfied customers - and it looks great!
When going from one telescope to the next you know you can't go down in size - the new needs to be bigger! I wanted more light.
I surfed the internet and read many threads on various forums with all sorts of OTA designs. My biggest inspiration ended up being the work of PrestonE who made a 20" RC. A good friend of mine agreed being my mentor in optics and his first advice was that i should start with less than a 20" RC. Go for a Newton design, he said and so I did.
Nicolaj Haarup at the lathe