After lots of agonising, I decided to go with the refractor, and picked it up last Friday. Its a bit daunting opening up those boxes and realising there is a whole lot to learn just to set it up, before even looking through it, but I did that on Friday night, just in time to see Saturn, which was mind-blowing.
I spent the next day getting to know the HEQ5 Pro mount, but despite all the reading I'd done about polar alignment, I could not get the scope to align properly. Doing a 3 star alignment, each time it slews to the nominated star, its way off target, even through the finderscope, let alone the 120mm refractor. All the date, time, location details are correct, and I followed step-by step, the superb notes by Trevor Hand (Thanks heaps) on IIS, on the Basic set-up. I used a compass to point the mount at 168 degrees (12 degrees East of magnetic South should be True South?). The latitude is set to 34 degrees on the mount, and I set the zero point for the central meridian of the time zone at zero (150 degrees longitude). (Not sure what to do with the date scale either - no instructions in this)
There's a polar alignment scope in the mount, but I can't identify Octantis through it or the OTA. I'm sure the problem lies with my poor knowledge of the sky - its early days for me. My question is, if I do eventually identify Octantis, should I physical move the tripod with the mount in the "home" position, to align it as closely as possible with the SCP, or can I just adjust the RA and Dec to line it up?
Anyway, I ended up spending each night over the weekend browsing the night sky. Seeing Saturn and Venus was great, but I got a huge surprise when I pointed the scope at the small magellanic cloud, and focussed in on a fuzzy spot -all of a sudden there is this beautiful globular cluster with thousands of pinpoints staring me in the face. I was just blown away. And then I went to the large Magellanic cloud, and I'm sure I saw a nebula there. (I'm sure you're getting the picture of my knowledge of the night sky)
Sunday night, the seeing was really good, so I just scanned the night sky again, after another failed attempt at polar alignment, and spent the time trying to learn the night sky.
So if anyone has some advice to help a confused beginner do a Polar alignment with an HEQ5 Pro mount, you'll probably stop a grown man from curling up in the foetal position and crying, any moment now.