hi ken, glad you asked
went out last night to a dark site (yes on a school night!) with some MAS guys. When i got there it was almost dark, just light enough to read my compass. I looked at the ground and said "looks pretty flat", so i didnt bother leveling, then got my compas out and set the mount about 10 deg east of south. In my haste I almost put the ota on before the counterweights
anyhow once set up i got my GPS out to get teh co-ords and entered them, did a 2 star alignment on aldebaran and some star in carina (Mia-something). I found that when it was slewing to these stars it was out by quite a bit so i had to use the arrows to center them in my 9mm ep (need EP with crosshairs).
Once this was done I found that it centered objects fiarly well in the 9mm (out about 1/3 from teh center of the EP). not bad for a quick align. I haent used the polar alignment scope yet.
over all happy
slewed to a few ngcs i have never seen before... and a hint, thors helmet is naught but an averted vision smudge in a 8" scope