Ruth gave me a Tasco telescope for my birthday a few years ago. I have had hours of fun using it. My brother bought an 8" telescope made by Ron Kelton. It is much better. So I thought I would have a go at building my own scope. Since I like seeing large parts of the night sky at once I decided to build a rich field telescope (RFT).
A RFT scope is one that has a low focal ratio (f#), that is it has a short focal length. This means that generally speaking one can see more of the night sky through a given eye piece compared to a telescope with a large f# number.
RFT scopes are very good for looking at/for deep sky objects, for example nebulae i.e. (Orion nebula i.e. M43, M42), star clusters i.e. the Pleiades (M45).
