Scope advice needed

[LukeSkywatcher]

Just my 2 cents..................

I personally am not a fan of EQ mounts. Its a very personal thing to me being in a wheelchair. The problem for me is/was not the OTA, it is/was not not even the tripod. Its the weight of the mount and then the weight of the counter weights and the fact that i have to move every component one piece at a time. Thats 4 trips in and out of the house carrying oddly shaped parts between my legs (Ohhhhhhh Matron !!!!!!!!!!!), and thats all before i get it re-assembled and setup outside. Not to mention the funny angles need to be contorted into to observe. Rotating the OTA or EP is a way around this but i never thought of it as it was my 1st scope and i knew next to nothing.

I'm so much happier since i bought my Heritage 130P, 70mm refractor and in particular my 8SE. They each weigh next to nothing, I can move the 130P and the 70mm on Horizon 8115 tripod outside in one go. The 8se i can now move outside in 2 trips (OTA and mount as 1 part, the tripod as another).

Sad but true..............my 90mm refrac on EQ mount is now packed away in the attic in a black sack simply because of the reasons i mentioned. I love the scope. It was my first and i saw the planets for the first time with it, so i really dont wanna sell it.

[Ricochet]

To be honest I think you're down-playing the EQ disadvantages, though you cover them. I don't think that the Dob advantage is just price - though the price is certainly a bonus. To re-iterate, Newtonian optics can be a bit of a pain on German Equatorials. As the scope slews around the sky the eyepiece orientation changes and you have to rotate the tube in the tube rings. This is a royal pest. You also have to contend with the meridian flip. (As you pass from E to W you have, sooner or later, to swap counterweight side for scope side and rotate in Dec through 180 degrees. This cannot be a 'positive!'

In visual use I think the Dob is indeed a cheaper mount but I also think it is a better mount. I have both, for what it's worth.

Olly

You are probably right there. I didn't want to preclude the idea that an eq mount might be ideal for a frac and could have put more emphasis on the specific issues when pairing a Newt with one.