[glend (Glen)]

Bert I'm 63 myself and can managed my 12" ok (so far) so I don't think the 8" is necessarily beyond you. It's true a dob can be hard to move around for us seniors but there are ways to do it, I built a leveling base for mine and that is also where my handtruck fits to move it around as a single assembly and it does not have to be taken apart to move from the shed to the observation points in my yard.

As to the dob manual, ask Andrews to email it to you, I am not aware that it's sitting on their website, they sent it to me via email.

The GSO dobs are abit like the old Detroit B' body muscle cars, a basic shell but with a big engine - that's what you get a basic dob but with good optics and aperature size for your $. It's a starting point, and many of us like fiddling around with them and modifying them, as Malcolm pointed out with the spring upgrade.

I recommend you look at getting some azimuth setting circles printed out and attached to your ground board so that aiming the scope gets much easier. Also a digitial incline meter (just an electronic protractor) with a magnetic base can sit on the top of the tube to give you the Altitude figure. My eyes are pretty ordinary these days so the finderscope is hard for me to use but with a good star chart software package that gives you the azimuth and altitude figures (and with the scope aligned to true north) it's pretty easy to get right to the target.

If you need some help I am happy to assist on the phone, just send me a private message and we can get in touch.