Orion EZ Finder II

I got a red dot finder in the post today! Havent (obviously!) had a chance to test it out yet, does anyone have any gotchas about these gizmos before I break it?

Cheers,
~Al

I've been so tempted to get a one-power finder. Does anyone have any recommendations, i.e. red-dot vs circles? Are they really better than finderscopes, and how do I attach one to my 'scope beside my finder?

and how do I attach one to my 'scope beside my finder?

This one comes with a `standard` mounting for an Orion Telescope finder. Which is of no use to me with a Meade LXD55.

The alternatives therefore are to either:
1. screw on the mount for it, mount and screws supplied, which is ok if you have a plain newtonian where you can get at that part of the tube.
2. use the double sided tape provided

Orion also sell a mount bracket to connect this to other mounts, but it looked to me as through they wanted an extra $20 for what is basically a different piece of plastic and more double sided tape!

Cheers,
~Al

Okay, so mounting it shouldn't be a problem.
I've got a Meade 8x50 finder on my SCT and a Celestron 6x30 finder on my newtonian. I find the 6x gives sharper images and that there seems to be a lot of coma in the 8x. Would a one-power finder be better? I'm always worried that I'm just using the finder wrong!
I know this is a bit off topic, but advice would be appreciated.

Hi Al,
My main crux with this sort of thing (having used reticle eyepieces) is that the battery will run out, and probabily sooner then you expect. This might sound abvious but make sure you have it turned off when its "off", if it comes with a dimmer switch.
I've also heard of these finders dewing up prettly quickly, further handycapping you as these types of finders dont gather light like a 8*50 finder would, been limited the naked eye magnitudes.
What size scope do you have this on ?

I've also heard of these finders dewing up prettly quickly, further handycapping you as these types of finders dont gather light like a 8*50 finder would, been limited the naked eye magnitudes.
What size scope do you have this on ?

Its on my 10" LXD55 SN. finder is 6x30.

I have several gripes with finderscopes, which led me down this route:
1. on an equatorial mount like mine you can end up in strange positions tryng to look through the finder.
2. it magnifies the image, sure it gets more light, but if you dont know the patch of sky youre looking at then youre can be in trouble.
3. The orientation of the image in the finder is often different to the orientation in the scope (perhaps due to the way I have to twist my back to look through th £$%^ing thing!)
4. The magnification is different.
Basically I find its not all that easy to correlate what you see in the finder with the view through the eyepiece especially if the finder is slightly out of alignment. Though this may be down to experience.

Aligning the red dot to the scope is fairly easy, plus this scope has a fairly wide field of view with even a 26mm eyepiece (1.33 degrees), so once Im sure where its pointing I can do my searching in the main instrument. This may not hold true for those with long focal length scopes with a narrow field of view though.

More when ive played with it a bit more! I've no idea about dew yet.

Cheers,
~Al