DUAL FINDER SCOPE BRACKET

[DAVE AMENDALL]

I was looking at these on Ebay They seem to range from £25 to £50. The idea seems to be one finder one guidscope, or two finders or one finder one red dot ect. Are they worthwhile or does it make things to heavy.? Any experienced comments would be helpful...........regards Dave

[pjsmith_6198]

My original scope was a Orion Starblast  6 which came with a red dot finder.   The finder worked well enough but I had trouble finding objects I couldn't see.    So I  bought  the dual finder bracket  and a 9x50 RACI finder.    That helped tremendously.    I used the red dot finder as a start and the RACI finder with the PSA to find the objects I couldn't find previously

With the weight of the RACI finder plus the bracket weight I had to rebalance a little bit.   Most of the extra weight was the finder.  I just loosened the tube rings and  slid the OTA back an inch or so.

I had a little trouble aligning the red dot finder afterwards.   I had to shim it up with a little card board.   After that it was fine.   

I recommend this.   The dual bracket along with the RACI finder were the best accessories I bought for the scope.   Made finding objects much easier.

[sidelight]

I ended up adding a second shoe directly to the scope.  As one of mine has a finder guider in this introduced too much movement.

Cheers

Ross

[chiltonstar]

I added the RDF to the finder barrel, otherwise the two finders are too high and I bang my head on one or another hwen looking through the EP.

Chris

[Linda]

The dual bracket is a bit heavy. I use it on my 127mm Maksutov, with a Rigel Quikfinder and the 6x30 finder. I hope that I also can put my 9x50 finder on it instead of the 6x30, when I receive it.

As the finder shoe on the Mak is a bit to the right of the scope, that's where the bracket is placed. The finder that is placed on the right side of the bracket is then hanging even more to the right. If you point the scope a bit sidewards, towards the right side, the finder will be hanging quite low. And moving the eyepiece up to look at it is useless, because the Rigel is standing in the way of where you want to hold your head.

I am therefore also reconsidering where I should put the 9x50 finder in the finder shoe and tape the Rigel to the scope in some other place, maybe more towards the front. Not sure what is smartest, as I also have isolation material that I need to remove and put back around the scope. For that, finders generally need to be taken off. We'll see when the other finder arrives. 

[ste7e]

i also wanted to add a finder score to my scope and didn't want to lose the rdf.

 

Maybe I'm a bit fool-hardy but rather than add the cumbersome looking 2-1 adapter I just got an additional shoe from Flo and drilled the scope to add it alongside the existing shoe - works a treat.

[jambouk]

I have used one for mounting two finder scopes, one strivgt through and one right angled, but i'd worry about mounting a guide scope as i fear this bracket may add more flexure between the guide scope and the main imaging scope.

James

[Mark at Beaufort]

I have used this type of bracket very successfully. I currently use it on my 12 inch Dob with a RDF on one side and a Lumicon 9x50 correct image finderscope on the other. I have balanced the scope on the basis of this bracket with a 24mm EP in the focuser.

All my observing is based on star hopping and this system allows me to undertake this task without difficulty.

Recommended.

[DAVE AMENDALL]

Thanks folks After your posts I can now see the advantages and possible pit falls of this bracket.Overall it looks advantageous.....cheers Dave