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Hi All,
Oh, I forgot. laser -v- cheshire/sight tube?
Both have advantages and disadvantages. I purchased a laser about 6 years ago when they first became very popular. I liked it and it produced perfectly good results. A friend of mine on his 20" truss dob uses a barlowed laser and it too works fine and is a pretty simple method.
However, about 12 months ago I went back to a cheshire/sight tube. The laser I had was a pain in the neck to collimate itself and had a habit of falling very slightly out of collimation itself when I when through the operation of changing its batteries. Also the batteries unless very fresh were unable to produce an easily seen (bright enough) dot for daytime setup/collimation. One time I found the batteries were dead out in the field at night and it was totally useless (so I collimated on a star image)
The old-fashioned cheshire never needs batteries, unless seriously abused does not fall out of collimation itself and can be used day or night (provided you have a weak light source at night) and makes errors in secondary colimation more easily seen and fixed.
So, that is my own personal preferrence -- my 2c worth.
Best,
Les D
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