Jim,
congratulations on your purchase.
What is the exposure duration when you see elongated stars? At that focal length tracking needs to be pretty good to get round stars during long exposures. there is also field curvature for off axis stars. I use liveview on my dslr and a bahatinov mask to collimate my 8RC. its on my website somewhere
http://deepspaceplace.com
I'll post the full url when i get back to civilisation..
James