The admin is not an incentivised "ambassador" for MSM, simply a keen user wishing to help others through unbiased knowledge-sharing. There is another MSM User Group page, but the caveat with that particular group is that it is administered by MSM "Brand Ambassadors", and their policing of comments other than favourable ones is very rigid. Any comments that criticise the MSM product in any way are
deleted and / or censored. Indeed, this reflects the approach taken by MSM itself on its website. As a paying customer, if you are dissatisfied with the product or the company's service, any negative feedback you leave on their website is deleted. As a paying customer myself, I left negative feedback regarding the suitability of the supplied brackets for the laser and polar scope.....these were taken down!! This group's purpose is for open and transparent discussion relating to the MSM product and its attendant accessories. The product is not perfect, and is continually being re-invented, redesigned, and the accessories such as laser pointers, polar scopes are changing all the time. Customers are essentially guinea pigs, and are part of MSM's development journey. Product inconsistency is an issue. Instruction manuals are poor, and in many cases do not equate to the product you are supplied with. Some may feel this is fine, that being part of the company's R&D cycle is a positive thing. Others will feel that this should be made clear from the outset, before you place your order and spend your money. The complete kit costs the best part of £300, so not an insignificant amount. If you are interested in taking pictures of DSOs, or using long and heavy telephoto lenses with a star tracker, the MSM Rotator is NOT the product for you. If you want to use lenses of 24mm or less, then the MSM with the laser pointer for polar alignment is perfectly adequate, and is an excellent portable and compact solution when compared with beefier star trackers on the market. If you wish to use lenses, say, from 28mm to 135mm (pretty much the limit of the MSMs payload), then you will need the polar scope (the laser pointer is actually illegal in certain countries, such as Switzerland and Australia). The polar scope brings other challenges, and again, these challenges may or may not present themselves to you, depending upon the scope you happened to be supplied with. Here, as with the laser pointer, product inconsistency is the issue. The purpose of the polar scope is to provide a greater degree of accuracy of polar alignment than that provided by the laser. However, the new version of the polar scope (launched at the end of 2020) comes with a generic bracket that does not provide a secure and firm mount for the scope. The fitting actually encourages lateral movement and wobble, and thus undermines the very purpose for which it is designed. I have a cheap solution to this problem, and it is covered in the posts within this Group page. In the interests of full disclosure and transparency, I was banned from the MSM User Group, as I was highlighting product deficiencies and inadequacies as they related to the laser and polar scopes. The "ambassador/moderator/admin" didn't like the negative comments (even though I also published solutions for other users experiencing the very same problems) and blocked me from the group!! This is the reason why I have created this group; to ensure there is an open and honest platform to discuss this product and to share experiences, both good and bad, and to collaborate on potential solutions. I am not expecting thousands of likes and followers, and this is not important. What I am trying to do here is provide a resource of open, honest and transparent reviews of an essentially excellent product, let down by some poorly designed components and accessories.
