Best Practice Question (cleaning)

[Rols]

I have just invested in Powermate 2.5x, it arrived dirty (very) looks like someone has deliberatly popped a perfect finger print into both ends of it..the joys of BuySell!!

i also have a 8" UHTC LX200 that has some condesation spots on the primary Glass, now i'm not obsessive about cleaning and after reading through have seen that best practice advice seems to be 'leave well alone' unless realy required.

But, i have cleaned glass for years and understand quite well the problems associated with not cleaning glass in time 'pitting,coating degredation,eventual focal blur/distorsion'

now obviously i'm not going to whip out the squidgy/fairy and try an polish up my EP's and scope with luke warm water (unless you tell me too!)

so it all leads to what is best practice for cleaning EP's and coated glass on scopes, what lint free do you guys use? what is best? what fluids if any? and what frequency?

is it realy best to just leave spots on my scope and will i really strip the coatings if i used my breath and a lint free lense cloth on my scope now and then??

sorry if this seems to get asked a lot but i'm looking for common sense answers and some trueth about what other do and what they do it with?

and a quick question within a question, why are the coatings not on the back of the glass? (is that really dumb??)

[Chris H]

I use this Misc’ - Baader Optical Wonder Fluid also have the cloth it's excellent. And I clean as little as possible once every six months maybe longer.

[ollypenrice]

You won't go wrong with the above. After ten years I took the corrector off my LX200 because an insect had died inside it (how did it get in?? Quick work because I never left it open for long...) t was extremely easy, The glass was marked on the edge for replacement so I just put it back in the same place. For all the scariness the whole process was a non-event.

Olly

[Rols]

Thanks Kriss/olly.

do i let that stuff soak or just take it straight back off?

[Chris H]

Straight off. I spray on cloth wipe, then using a dry part of the cloth wipe again if necessary.