Good stuff Chris!
If you intend to primarily do your imaging from your house, and you have room out back, why not consider putting a 3-4" pipe in the ground (cemented) to make a simple pier, and keep the basic HEQ5 on that, so it can sit there parked at SCP. Easy to take the scope inside each night, make a litle removable weatherproof fabric/plastic cover for the mount on the pier, and you could even run a cable out to it so you can use your lappy from inside. No more mozzies or alignments!
I'm fortunate to have built a simple obs, and now do all my imaging from inside, but I always thought even a simple fixed pipe-pier in the back yard would be a very cost effective way of not having to lug the mount out and drift align each night.
Don't forget my sermonette on Barlow-laser collimation. Like you, I thought a straight laser would be fine. No, it lies, by being just a point source. You need a nice set of parallel rays to get your primary correctly aligned. A cheap no-name used Barlow in reverse does that for you. Google is your friend.
As they say; trust me, been there, done that
