[Atmos (Colin)]

Okay, so I sold a 12" dob I bought off IIS some 12-18 months ago to keep in a caravan at my dark site. I'd originally wanted an 8" as it was the biggest I knew would comfortably fit through my caravan door (which is pretty narrow) but got offered a 12" at a good price. Let's just say that the base of that dob was larger in every dimension than the doorway! With some contortionist skills it could fit through safely but it was far from comfortable.

I've had it under the skies on three occasions and attempted views on two of those; all three times beaten by the elements. My entire property is clay so it holds water pretty well. First night the secondary dewed over while I was waiting for the primary to cool and I was doing some low powered observing.

Second attempt I capped the dob and left the fans running for a few hours and later found that the primary and secondary had a light amount of dew from the moisture being sucked up from the ground level. Third attempt had a nice breeze which staved off the dew but terrible seeing which limited me to some nice lower power views but the planets (which I wanted to do) were like looking up from the ocean floor.

I'd originally wanted a no fuss telescope to leave up there but between the dew issues and the utter pain of getting the dob from inside the caravan to outside I'm reevaluating my options.

I can go back to getting an 8" F/6 dob like my original idea OR leaving my HEQ5 up there as well and getting a C8 or a SW180. I'm largely not interesting in trying to chase down faint fuzzies but more interested in star clusters, luna and planetary.

Apart from tracking, is there going to be much that a SW180 or C8 is going to give over a stock SW 8" F/6?