Looking at the gear in your sig, you're pretty much already set up for some EAA Mark. Your AZ-EQ5 is perfectly suitable for EAA with the C8 or the 102mm. You would probably want to use an f/6.3 reducer on the C8 so that you're not shooting at f/10 which might limit your FOV too much. At f/6.3 you can easily go for planetaries, galaxies, globulars, small to mid sized open clusters and smaller nebs like the Trifid. There's heaps that you could reel in with just the C8. At f/6.3 your exposures would be shorter than at f/10 too, allowing you to limit exposure times to get a little bit more of the real time feel for the EAA session.
Are you using the C8 with an off axis guider by any chance? Your gear would probably work fairly well for EAA in that configuration for longer exposures if you were so inclined. If you wanted to limit yourself to say, 30 second subs, you could get away without guiding if you're setting up in EQ mode and polar aligned. In ALT/AZ mode you'll battle field rotation a little bit and be limited to fairly short exposures depending upon where in the sky you're pointing. There might be a little more fuss involved in ALT/AZ mode.
Sharpcap Pro would see you through most EAA activities from focusing, to polar aligning, to real time stacking / viewing / histogram adjustments etc.
You could use Stellarium to navigate the sky and for slewing the telescope to objects of interest.
I might be telling you everything that you already know mate. If that's the case, please move along lol. Nothing to see here
What are the specs of your 102mm. Does it give you a wider field of view compared to the C8 at f/6.3? If it does, it could be perfect for hauling in larger nebs, galaxy clusters and larger objects in general.
I'm jealous of the skies you'll be going to mate. I've almost forgotten what Bortle 2 skies are like
