I had the same thoughts Mick, and was contemplating the idea of mounting the ed80 off the side of the dovetail to bring it closer to the axis of rotation.
The issues then are that you need a 3D balancing system and it becomes a lot more complex along with the possibility of things banging into the tripod legs.
As for Mike going from an eq platform to an eq6, I would have thought the platform would be more stable
Perhaps the difficulty is in getting accurate polar alignment. Just random ramblings on my part, I might be totally wrong and i hope for Mikes sake that I am.