Welcome Mark !
I'm new here too, have just sold my Star Adventurer and am buying a HEQ5 Pro (sound familiar?
) that happens to come with a 5" f/9.4 refractor that I'll be using for viewing, and have a Nikon D800 for AP (been doing widefield shots and other types of photography for years)
I used the SA for a while and it's a good portable lightweight/load solution. Used a pair of binoculars to familiarize myself with the night sky / star hop etc. while doing long exposures, along with laptop to check against Stellarium and to run my Polemaster software for Polar Alignment.
Andy