Whoa! so many questions !
I'll answer them in point form as each one could require an iceman sized essay to adequately cover them
Yep you know me as Starker. Is there anyone else from the gaming community here also ?
My scope I bought from Andrews Comms in Sydney and had it freighted to me in Melbourne. They are considerably cheaper than Bintel ( I think most dealers are). I got mine for $899 with a choice of four plossls from their range plus shipping. The plossls were pretty crappy though.
Azimuth mods: I added teflon furniture glides to the ground board which are a little higher than the original pads and seemed to give a small improvement to the Az motion.
My reference to milk bottle washers is about washers cut from 2 litre plastic polyethelene kind milk bottles. Place about 6-8 around the centre bolt between the base board and the rocker box and this very much improves the az motion by taking some of the weight off the outer pads. All is explained here :
http://www.tomhole.com/Motion%20Tips%20and%20Tricks.htm
Flocking - Im not sure if I can say there was a huge improvement as I wasnt able to do an A-B test, but when viewing certain objects contrast is everything, so it certainly cant hurt !
DSC - makes finding objects as easy as SK killing noobs with a panza
i used to constantly run in to the pc and back out to the scope trying to find objects and starhop etc.
I remember once spending close to an hour trying to find four globs around scorpio. Now with DSC im done with them in 5 minutes and could have toured 25 messiers in the same time.
The DSC cost me about $400 in total to build compared to close to a grand to buy one!
EQ platform. I got halfway through constructing one and then bought the pentax xl eyepieces. After finding out how much easier is it to track objects at high power with a WIDE field eyepiece, I no longer saw the need to continue building it.
About purchasing equipment.
Anything that isnt Chinese made carries a 50% markup minimum in Australia compared to what the lucky folks in USA pay.
I bought my two pentax xl's new from a dealer in the US for $229US each . Compare that to $550 Aus !
I bought a Celestron ultima 12.5 in Aus from York optical for $245AUS. i later found out americans pay something like $90US for the same item. *******s!
Astromart is a great way to get gear at a good price. The hard thing is finding a seller willing to sell outside of the US.
Im currently seeking a 21mm pentax XL and then im done buying eyepieces.
A word of warning. Once youve looked through a pentax or other premium eyepiece, you'll never look through a plossl again without feeling like your viewing through a drinking straw.
Finally, a fantastic resource for users of our particular scopes can learn a great deal about mods, what gear is good and getting the most from your scope is this yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/skyquest-telescopes/
Searching the archives first will provide many answers and save the embaressment of asking the same noob questions that appear weekly there. That ought to keep you busy for a while
Geoff.