I just got the Protostar curved secondary holder in today and installed it (23 Dec 04).  It arrived well packaged and in great shape.  The kit includes the secondary holder, curved vane, 2 mounting brackets, all the nuts and bolts you need to install it, an allen wrench for the secondary adjustment and even a drill bit for drilling the mounting holes.  Oh, and directions (I didn't use them ;).

I decided to just wing it and put the thing on my Starmaster.  Wasn't too hard and here are a couple pics:

Looking in the focuser

I think it looks way cool.

As for the install, I just mounted it to the Kydex by drilling four holes.  I determined where to drill the first hole by holding the vane up (with secondary holder, but not the secondary) and looking through the focuser until it looked centered.  I marked one hole, drilled it, mounted the vane with one bolt and had another look through the focuser.  Off by 3/16".  I could have made that up with the secondary bolt, but wanted to keep the secondary bolt travel at mid length.  So, I just elongated the hole in the Kydex by 1/4" or so and, oila! it worked.  I marked the other 3 holes and mounted the brackets. 

I measured the centering of the secondary in the tube and determined it was about 3/16" too close to the focuser.  I moved the secondary vane up on the mounting brackets 1 notch which put them at the intermediate position.  That put me about 1/16" too far out, so I used my muscles and pushed the secondary in 1/16".  All centered up.

Next, I took a look through the focuser with no ep.  I noticed the vane was not as skinny as it might oughta be, so I made the proper adjustments and it was skinny as it could be.

I used my Cheshire and rotated and centered the secondary under the focuser.  Then I adjusted the tilt of the secondary with my 2" laser and then adjusted the primary with my Black Cat 2" cheshire.

All in all, about an hour's work.  Reading the directions would have slowed me down.  Not reading them increases the risk of a flub up and re-start, but to be honest, this is not as hard as it reads. 

So, did you catch the part where I said I just mounted the vane brackets to the Kydex?  I initially did that just to make sure of where to drill the holes through my UTA support dowels.  Didn't want to turn them into swiss cheese.  Well, after I had it all mounted up on the Kydex, I saw no reason to take the extra step to attach it to the UTA dowels.  I will eventually, but I'm going to give this a go for now.  If it doesn't stop raining, though, I'll probably end of fastening it up to the UTA dowels sooner than later.  My secodary is only 1.83" and the whole curved setup is very light, so it doesn't take much to hold it on.

So, how does it perform?  No clue, other than I think it looks a lot cooler.   I tried to think of some experiment to determine how solid the setup is, but all I could think of was to sneak up on it and pop the laser in to see if it was moving.  Then I swung the UTA in all directions, acted like I was walking away and then zipped back to see if the dot on the secondary had moved.  It had not.  I think the only way to determine if this is a solid setup will be to use it as much as possible.  I know how much futzing the original 4 vane Protostar secondary holder required (none), so anything more than none will be an indication of a less stable setup.

I'll update the page after first light.