[darkskybondi]

Thanks guys - all VERY useful information. Initially I read your posts and thought, ah, it's done for, I'll have to call in the cavalry and ask a kind astronomer to take a look at my scope.

Then I thought - the skies are semi-clear, although the seeing isn't great, but I'll give it another bash because I can see Orion.

So to compensate for my inexperience, I went for the longer focal length and thought, let's see if I can spot Orion, even with an uncollimated mirror. SUCCESS! I spotted it, dropped down to the 10mm, and had a nice view. Yes, it's an easy object, and yes, I need to collimate properly (God KNOWS what I've done to the primary with my inept, tight screwing - hope I haven't buggered it totally!) but there it was: I could see 4 stars in the trapezium at 10mm focal length.

So THANK YOU all for your help. I knew I needed to go down, eat dinner, breathe, and then give it another quick bash.

TASKS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE:
- hopefully get a 2x barlow so I can collimate as you suggested Geoff.
- I'll leave the spring replacement for another time.. just want to get it rough and ready for the moment
- soon, get a high quality, short focal length eyepiece, and a wide FOV eyepiece.

THANKS AGAIN! Hope I will move from Orion to something more challenging nice and soon. IIS support is wonderful.

Cheers!
DSB