Well, have had a month or so of use with the little second pier obs, very happy with it. Makes it very easy to setup for the night's imaging and then tidy things up when completed. The RC8 imaging train is too long to fit into the shed, but simple disconnect of USB3 and DC from the camera and it slides off as a unit for storage in the adjacent main obs. Easy Peasy, even for an old fart at 1am.
I found my wifi setup from the pier back to the main obs then onwards via the AP/bridge and cat5 to LAN switch then ethernet over powerline to my house was a bit flaky, so eventually decided to just run cat 5e from the pier to the main obs LAN router/bridge. 100% reliable connectivity now. WAN 30 down, 40 up at the pier.
Presently numbingly cold when doing PA and collimation star tests at the mount using a tablet with local hot spot for remote desktop, but I guess a lot of us have to do that on a regular basis anyway when not fortunate to have an obs.
The RC8 is performing well on the AM5, averaging about .9", with some wind-related spikes, probably due to the rather large surface area of the side by side arrangement. I'm about to write up my RC8 + OCAL pimp/collimation experiences, which are very positive, so all in all, a happy camper at the moment, with clear Bortle 2 skies almost every night
