So... the free telescope. It certainly needs a collimation as it is nowhere near lined up at the spider. I've played with it and it's a lot better but not perfect... yet.
The coating on the lens/mirror is kaput. When I say it was 'flaking' earlier, I'm talking about massive 1-2cm in diameter flakes. Tried to clean them up with just water and the rest of the coating came off too. Ah well, these things happen.
Got it out last night and was looking at the moon. Clear images, even if not the most stable of setups. One thing I'm a bit annoyed about however is that it appears it cannot be used for imaging. I've attached my DSLR to the telescope using the T-ring etc and the camera cannot focus no matter what I do... except hold the camera further back from the actual tube and I can grab shots that way but it's not producing a very good end image
So, whilst it was free (well not for my brother
) it may not be suitable for what I want