Hi, James,
difficult to reply. I have never worked with Alpy, but assuming that DADOS has a reflecting grating and Alpy a transmission grism, I think that DADOS takes some advantage, but the difference should be small.
I'm very happy with DADOS: I think it is more versatile thanks to the selectable gratings. The presence of 3 slits of 25, 35 and 50 um is another nice feature. It is true that calibrating an Alpy is more comfortable due to the calibration module, but calibrating a DADOS is not difficult: I take flats in a similar way as astrophotography (but with a 150W halogen lamp) and for the calibration in lambda I use a modified RELCO 480 4-80W glowstarted feeded front the aperture of the telescope (a fast Newton f/4.7 but with the focal doubled with a Barlow ED 2X). It is easy to build it and the budget is minimum.
Another difference is that a reflecting grating has a more linear dispersion than a grism, but with a suitable calibration this problem should be avoided.
DADOS is heavier than Alpy but if you have a decent focuser there shoudn't be a concern.
Greetings
Fran
P.S.: sorry for delay to reply. I didn't notice your post
