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My opinion is that unless you have a decently dark sky to regularly observe from, 8" or more of aperture is where it starts getting interesting!
I use an 8" SCT on both an equatorial and alt-az mount and have been really happy with what it's shown me since I've been in Australia... there's no doubt a bigger scope will show you more but they get big and heavy really quickly beyond 8". From memory the heaviest component (for the 6" or 8" SGT) is the mount itself at about 7kg...then you've got the tripod, counterweight and OTA.
I should say that for visual you will get better value from a Dob, but with the equatorial mount you can at least change the scope to suit your target. SCTs are not wide field instruments, so depending on your choice of targets for AP, you might also want a small refractor (but that's just my opinion, there are plenty of real experts in here that could give you better answers!)
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