Compared to the 35mm Panoptic the 30mm WideScans and clones are complete
crap.

Complete crap is a 4 mm 0.965 inch eyepiece with all plastic optics. I have
one I can send you if you want to try one out for comparison.

At the other end of the scale, different people seem to have different opinions
of how well the BW-Optik 30 mm eyepiece works.

Tom T. seems to be more than satisfied.

It may be that he happens to have gotten one that works quite well and maybe
the one you looked through was not one of the better ones.

If Tom liked the 30 mm BK-Optik better than the Panoptic in his F7.5 scope, I
think that is one data point and one that that you and I (and others) should
respect.

jon isaacs