Hi Rez,
Spend as much as you can possibly afford on the mount. A good GEM will beat an 8" SCT on a wedge for portability no doubt. I think that there is a Losmandy G11 in the classified section, this has the Ovision worm installed and these are great portable mounts.
You made no mention of the type of camera you are planning on using (edit, just saw the Starshoot Pro, I'll leave what I wrote as it applies to the Orion as well). If you are using a DSLR, then I would suggest looking at an OAG type setup rather than guide scope, less trouble over all and with a nice small sensitive guide camera (which could be used as a planetary cam down the road) you shouldn't have to worry about acquiring guide stars.
After getting all of this, next consider the scope. I know it sounds stupid to leave the optics to last, but with the general quality of optics at the moment, there are plenty of good OTAs out there for well under $2k, an 8" GSO RC is under $1k at Andrews. Or a nice small refractor will give you plenty of field and will be easier to guide as well.
Cheers
Stuart
|