Hi, some more things pro dobs: it happened to me several times in the past year that I found an interesting object as a result of the "sketch and scoot" approach, when I returned to the eyepiece, I noticed a faint companion galaxy not far away to the object of the sketch.

The other good thing in sketching without a drive is that the object continuously slides through the primary mirror and the eyepiece, so you have the chance that here and then it is reflected through parts of your optics which perform better than the rest.

The last thing is that you learn the stellar neighborhood of the object, so you may find it easier next time.

I had eq platforms in the past, but I feel much comfortable with the current dob. However, currently I'm building an equatorial horseshoe mount, because I want to take images with my home-built spectrograph, and I already know, that it will be a real pain to use sometimes when sketching.

Frankly, for me the only difficulty in sketching with a dob is the rotating FoV. Wide-field eyepieces are a must. (The problem is that high-quality wide-field eyepieces that are suitable for fast scopes (mine is an f/5 12") cost a fortune.)