Baader Skysurfer V

[Sunshine]

Several weeks ago I ordered a 50mm Tak finder, somehow I knew I was in for a hard learning experience as I have only used a red dot finder for decades and love them. Sure enough after weeks of trials and tribulations I am tossing in the towel on optical finders. It was dreadful, I could sooner become a contortionist than deal with a straight through optical finder which mounts so close to the eyepiece. Down on my knees straining my neck in painful positions as I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing, stars were upside down, back to back, back to front, side to side, upside down and there were hundreds more than I could see naked eye. 
 

My pretty Tak 50mm finder will be kept for one reason alone, to look pretty on my 102 at star parties, I like to keep the scope as complete and original as possible so I will be purchasing the clamshell which I’m sure I will use but the finder will be esthetic only lol. It so happened that upon calling my local astronomy shop the owner asked about how I am getting on with the finder and I almost sobbed haha, he realized and understood my love of red dot finders and I mentioned I had modified a Telrad to make it shorter. He mentioned I should really try a sky surfer V as I have owned every single RDF except the sky surfer.

My shop owner mentioned it is THE red dot finder to end them all, he loves his so I said sure, why not!. It was delivered yesterday and I was struck by its build quality and ruggedness, it seems like it belongs on a Javelin rocket launcher, only the caps are plastic and it has an inch of extra tube on each end which serve as dew shields which can be unscrewed to make it smaller. There are 10 brightness settings and it can be used during the day as a solar finder which is great. It cost exactly  as much as three Telrads but, I can appreciate why, even the mounting hardware are metal. Once mounted it it as sturdy as a Sherman tank, not a millimeter of slack anywhere, the dovetail base fit perfectly on the existing holes where a tak bracket fits but, as I hate having a finder close to my eyepiece I will soon devise an adapter to mount it on the rings closer to the objective as I want.

in the coming days I will have a chance to use it and I will update this post, from first impressions I must say it is worth every penny.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Sunshine

[Rainmaker]

Very nice purchase!  I have them on each of my scopes.

[Alan White]

Nice, and an interesting story as many will have done similar.
I often womder about the Skysurfer over the Telrad,
because let's face it the Telrad is a big lump and looks terrible.

[callisto]

4 minutes ago, Alan White said:

let's face it the Telrad is a big lump and looks terrible.

Aww, poor little Telly....beauty is in the eye of the beholder 😉

[Sunshine]

When I think about telrads and how well they work and are easy to align and use, my mind boggles at how the makers have never cared a smidgeon to improve its appearance over decades time. This is almost insulting, I am willing to bet that the Telrad can be just as good and be half the size, it is as though the maker just doesn’t care a bit as long as the money keeps coming in. As much as I love the Telrad I feel frustrated with the makers and their utter disregard for improvement, it is a love/hate relationship with this plastic “lump”.

[Alan White]

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

When I think about telrads and how well they work and are easy to align and use, my mind boggles at how the makers have never cared a smidgeon to improve its appearance over decades time. This is almost insulting, I am willing to bet that the Telrad can be just as good and be half the size, it is as though the maker just doesn’t care a bit as long as the money keeps coming in. As much as I love the Telrad I feel frustrated with the makers and their utter disregard for improvement, it is a love/hate relationship with this plastic “lump”.

I fully agree, its very much function rather than form in the Telrads case.
 

But a question for you @Sunshine, is the Baader unit fit for a Takahashi or other fine scope, 
or does it have issues of being too bright etc. that the Telrad does not?

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by Alan White

[callisto]

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

it is a love/hate relationship with this plastic “lump”.

I love my Marmite, I mean Telrad 😁

[Sunshine]

26 minutes ago, Alan White said:

I fully agree, its very much function rather than form in the Telrads case.
 

But a question for you @Sunshine, is the Baader unit fit for a Takahashi or other fine scope, 
or does it have issues of being too bright etc. that the Telrad does not?

 

We will see once I put it to use, looking at the lowest setting seems to be fine, as for whether it is suitable for a Tak? my scope doesn’t care, I don’t think it will fling the skysurfer off its back lol.

[Alan White]

Glad your scope is easy going about accessories 😉

What I meant was, do you think it looks tak like in quality?

 

[Sunshine]

1 hour ago, Alan White said:

Glad your scope is easy going about accessories 😉

What I meant was, do you think it looks tak like in quality?

 

It is by far the best built red dot finder I have seen, almost military. Regarding it being Tak like, I think we could all agree that unlike other scopes which accessories look as though they belong on one or the other, the look of Tak’s make any accessories not made by Tak stand out. One can easily swap accessories from skywatcher to Orion to APM for example and they all look like they belong. Tak on the other hand make accessories for their scopes which really only look like they belong on their own scopes.