Thanks all, yep I picked it up on Sunday and we even managed a test drive as the thick broken layer of ex-Melbourne Cloud magically cleared.
Upon arriving, Peter gave a thorough tutorial on assembly and disassembly of the scope, how the components work etc - basically he demonstrated it, then had me do it. I have to say, the new scope takes literally 1-2 minutes to assemble and tear down, while the old version was a frustrating, especially when it came to attaching the UTA, having to wrestle with it to fit it onto the poles then tightening up several screws. But with the new scope, it just slips on, a flick of the clamp and that's it.
One thing that really stood out for me is the collimation of the secondary. Now, the secondary mirror *used* to be the bane of my existance, fiddling with those bloody screws and tools only to get it moving in random directions. Now, it can be accomplished in exactly 0 seconds using the ultra smooth hand nobs and laser collimator. Primary collimation is just as easy using the barlow attachment on the laser. That Astrosystems laser is a beautiful thing. Goodbye flashlight and squinting thru the cheshire in the middle of the night
Peter suggested we try the scope, but it was quite cloudy so I was skeptical, but it actually cleared up quite nicely. So we set up the scope in the field - to be greeted by horror seeing and rapid onset of Dew. Peter did explain that seeing in that area is often poor. However, the moon looked good, even if seen from the bottom of a swimming pool and could immediately pick out 2 Plato Craterlets with an 18mm eyepiece.
We also tried a Paracorr on the Jewel Box, and bloody hell what a difference! Granted, we used a 35mm Panoptic, so coma was much more than what I'll be seeing with my 22mm and shorter LVW's but the Paracorr dramatically cleaned up the edge of the field.
Then, we packed the scope in the car as it was getting late and went inside for a bite. Then I was on my way, running into deck of Melbourne cloud as I hit Wallan and even some rain by the time I was on the Monash. Gee, who didn't see that one coming
Many thanks to Peter and Kim for their hospitality and to Peter for creating this masterpiece!