Oh wow...
Ok today I got a bit adventurous. I pulled out my laser collimation tool. Then I racked the focus tube as far in to the scope as it could go I put the laser tool in and made certian it fit without being loose.
Then I looked at the spot on the primary mirror. Ewwww the red laser dot was half way to the side of the mirror. Not even close. Ok so I fiddled around adjusting the tilt of the secondary mirror. Eventually I got the red dot centered.
Then I aligned the primary mirror using the laser tool.
I then checked the red dot again and repeated the steps about three times.
Eventually everything lined up nicely. So I put the laser tool away and check with my sight tube. Usually when I do this everything looks lined up with the laser but isn't lined up in the sight tube. Holy starlight Batman the sight tube showed everything aligned.
The alignment was not 100% perfect but it was pretty darn close to it. Everything lined up both in the laser and the sight tube. I was happy to say the least. I still need some fine tuning but everything looked pretty darn good so far.
I waited until dark and went out to look at Alpha Centauri and other things :p ... The stars were little pin pricks of light with bare minimal, if any, flaring. This was using the standard eyepiece that came witht he scope (not the best eyepiece around I might add but it is good enough). Yep stars were sharp as they could be. I had a bit of a problem losing some focus near the edges of the view but I messed about witht he screws holding the eyepiece in the focus tube and it seemed to fix the problem.
After a while I turned the scope to the Moon. I was amased. The first thing that struck me was how much brighter the view seemed to be than I had on other nights. The moon was so bright I nearly had to squint to see it. It was blazing and sharp. The craters all were sharp and crisp and far more detail than ever before. I noticed all manner of things I couldn't see before. I was very impressed. The birghtness was markedly different to the badly collimated views I had before. Everything just looked sharper.
So I tried my 3.5mm Hyperion eyepiece (a nice eyepiece by the way *oh boy* it is nice :p). I saw so much detail I hadn't seen on other nights. The seeing conditions were not the best as the view was swimming around a bit but with such high magnification on this tiny scope I was not complaining. In the few moments where the air cleared enough to allow a crisper view I could see craters within craters and rills and mountains and valleys and ... and .. and.........
Anyway lets just say I am holy doollllly shell shocked at the level of improvement. The views now are like a whole new scope compared to the days when it was way out of whack.
I have the scope outside now cooling down. I am hoping to catch Jupiter when it gets high in the sky and where I can see it from my balcony. Yeah I live in a unit so I need to move around to get clear views or wait for certian times for things to move into view. Jupiter is going to look awesome I know it
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So all my trials with collimation are starting to pay off. I knew it would be worth getting right and it was. I think I can tweak it just a bit more but so far it looks "PRETTY COOOOOL".