Thank you to Mike, Brendan, Barry (I pay taxes too
), Jeanette and Dave for your responses.
OK then, it seems from all this fabulous advice is the 8" BD on the Heq5 is a good place to start, especially (for $1349) when there is some serious change left over for some other goodies/necessities like an MPCC and dew control of some sort and maybe a power tank + inverter for the laptop
Question is, is the refractor idea dead? HEQ5 with ED100 any good for visual if the mood takes me (compared obviously to the 12" it wouldnt be much chop)? Otherwise I would say that the multipurpose 8" on the Heq5 would probably satisfy my visual AND AP needs moving forward and I could possibly offload both other scopes at some stage down the track to fund the slippery slope if the bug bites hard.
Sound reasonable?
Cheers
Chris