[Thiink]

Thanks very much to those that replied, its appreciated. I guess it's pretty much what I was expecting. I might look at purchasing a decent EP for planetary use; I never really thought the barlow could be half the issue.

The biggest problem is that I have never really read anywhere what to expect visually when looking at planets, only what people have said about imaging them. I've read that the optics should be (conservatively) good for around 25-30x per inch of aperture, which is around 300x max. It's more the image scale that I was trying to get, detail is visible at lower powers but its harder to see.

I really need to get to a meet or something so I can look through a few other newts/dobs, and EP's.

Ice: I might need to check my secondary for astigmatism, stars arent appearing quite round, they are slightly skewed. I noticed this on Sunday night when I was star testing. The primary is fine, its been checked several times when I've had it out. I should really have checked the secondary when I had it out to square the focuser. How much difference can astimatism of the secondary make to plantary images? I might have a go at getting the secondary out during this week.

Ving: that's where I am at as well, the 9mm with 2x barlow works fine on doubles (at least it did when I was testing on Sunday night), I havent tried anything else.