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Hi Dave, sorry for the late reply, I've only just come back to this thread today.
But yes I have...one night only a couple of weeks ago, when the sky looked spot on as evening fell. My scope was occupying the hallway UNASSEMBLED(!!) and I had to put it together, - fast. Thankfully at the time of disassembly I had placed stick-on numbers on struts to show which part married up to where. I had bought the stickers at a stationers along the way and the sticker sheets had several sheets of letters so I had three A's, three B's etc. Even so, before I got some on the previous owner had taken some struts off. So I didn't know which frame went which side...took me a while longer to get it done than I expected.
Anyway, uncollimated and still with dust and some dried dirt smeared on both primary and secondary, I got to look at M42 just before it sunk into the treetops. It looked pretty good I thought. Also jewel box cluster (what a novice I am eh?!) I didn't use the Paracorr coma corrector and on star fields the image was quite blurry from about halfway out to the edge, something which I didn't see so much with the nebula. I am interested to see how the corrector helps.
Then Jupiter. For the first time in my life I saw more than two bands, - 3 for once!
I have bought a collimator and found it was fairly well-out, which I corrected with the secondarys' knobs. I have yet to clean the optics and collimate properly and am looking forward to it, but man I am such a novice really. I see from online that distilled water is the go for rinsing off the mirrors after cleaning.
Still thinking about a 14" SCT though (there's one for sale in Aus at the moment and I have been given the tentative authority to buy so sent an enquiry today), for the goto and tracking which is something I have never really had. I once owned the 10" LX50 which is on Trademe at present, and for which I built a trolley and then sold it as I wanted a LX200 SCT for the goto and better tracking. AP is a casual interest but sadly these fork mount SCTs are not so good for that I understand, even if on a good wedge, but still the pull for the 14" SCT is strong...
Anyway, I am pleased with the 20" dob so far, have yet to clean it up and collimate then drag it outside again for Round 2. The stiction and movement was better than I expected it to be, and it didn't jiggle all around either after moving onto an object, it settled down really quickly. I am happy, and can think about selling the 23".
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