Telescope Reviews: Using the Questar Standard finder

I also posted this on the Q yahoo group and feel almost embarrassed to ask for help with this but here goes:

OK, so I've decided to keep my late model Q which I'd bought primarliy for lunar and planetary viewing but also for occasional double star viewing, etc.

Now, I'm primarily a refractor guy and have a couple Tele Vue scopes and use the Starbeam for my starhopping or to simply point to where I know something is.

Last night, I took the Q out intending to look at a couple doubles and, hopefully, M51, M81 and M82, and M13. Even though I know exactly where these things are, I couldn't get the Q pointed at them. I couldn't even train it on
Albireo and tried all sorts of gyrations to get it into the FOV! While I've got a 24mm Brandon coming, I was using my 16mm in the scope. First, I polar aligned it and had a lot of trouble getting it pointed to what I wanted to see and never could get it at Albireo even though I had no trouble getting to Vega and looking at the double double there. I then went to alt-az mode and still could not line the dang thing up properly. It was frustrating to say the least although the couple things I did manage to train it one were simply dandy.

I'm not a setting circle guy and other than tracking planets or the moon, polar aligning is not really important to my visual use although I do polar align for solar system use.

I guess what I'm wondering is how best to get this thing into a point and shoot mode. I read something about someone attaching a GLP to the dew shield but mine is a tad loose and attaching things to a Q like that seem wrong somehow. Anyone have some tips for me to point the objective at what I want to see?

I'm using a Manfrotto 475 tripod and 501 head for the mount. I'm hesitant to sink the money into a Tristand however if I can't use this a little better than
I am at the moment.

Thanks for any thoughts!

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Tele Vue Pronto/Telepod
Tele Vue NP-101/Gibraltar/Sky Tour
Questar 3.5 Standard
Celestron FS 80 EQ WA
Canon 10x30 IS binoculars
Nikon SE 8x32 binoculars
Zeiss Victory 10x25 binoculars
Garrett 25x100 IF binoculars
Manfrotto 475B/501
TV and Pentax ep's

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