Thanks for the reply Frank I did manage nearly another hour of lum. last night, might also be lucky tonight. Alex you have some good ideas on lightening the load on the mount, as I use a old st4 auto guider I need to manually center a guide star with an illuminated eyepiece because the st4 ccd chip is very tiny. The zs66 guide scope sounds great I think a modified finder scope would make finding and focusing difficult but I might be wrong.
Michael you must have a few spare dslrs by now you could sell!!
go on, you know you want a cooled mono ccd
and sure you can find a way to keep your wife happy
thanks David and David for the kind words
clear skies ( they really are tonight )
Ken