I already have a dark site in mind. I was there in April before I had my gear and took short exposure fixed tripod images on my older camera. Even with fighting clouds, it was an amazing view - the detail that can be seen even with the naked eyeball was great.
Leveling: The mount has level bubbles on it, so now I get the bubbles closer to the centre instead of just within the lines. That seemed to work well.
PA: According to the process with the G11/Gemini PA assist, you do one thing at a time (Az or Alt) before iterating to the other star and doing the opposite - just as you've mentioned.
Focus: Since I wrote my post, I've become a bit better at using the camera's liveview to focus. I haven't wrapped my head around APT yet to see how it'll help, but that will come - mostly a matter of RTFM, watch videos, etc. Haven't had the time recently to do that.
Exposure times: Once I sort out the other problems, I'll work my way through this to determine what's optimal from my backyard. The link had interesting reading - and makes me want to sort out things even more so when I get to do my dark site trip(s) I get maximum value from them.
Auto Guiding: I'll leave the details to the other thread, but I'll say here that I'm looking forward to sorting it out and getting more usable data.
