A new detector apparatus has been designed and developed to be used in experiments performed with radioactive ion beams. It consists of 16 highly segmented silicon strip detectors arranged in two‐layer telescopes and subtending a large solid angle (about 70&percent; of 4&pgr; sr). An innovative readout system for the position information that uses highly integrated electronics (ASIC chips) has been implemented. A first successful experiment has been performed at the Argonne National Laboratory (USA) to study the17F scattering by a208Pb target at 90.4 MeV of incident energy. The17F angular distribution has been analyzed and the optical model potential best‐fit parameters determined. The same analysis performed on17F data taken at higher incident energy, in completely different experimental conditions, gives consistent results. The comparison with experiments performed with stable beams (19F,16O,17O) indicates a behavior for the17F more similar to that of the Oxygen isotopes than to the19F one. Despite of the short data collection time, also the cross section for the17F →16O + p break‐up process has been estimated. © 2004 American Institute of Physics