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Hi Alasdair!
Big question is what you are wanting to do with the scope. From your post it appears that it is primarily a visual scope as there is no mention of a camera.
While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the setup you are looking at, and the EQ3 mount is from what I have seen, a fine basic EQ mount, my personal opinion is that that this sort of setup is not the best for beginner visual observers. The reasons are several but mainly you will be dealing with polar alignment, a mount that moves in a non intuitive way, the eyepiece can end up in all sorts of odd positions. Also this is not a go to system, you will still have to learn to navigate using this scope.
If you are primarily interested in visual, a dob is a much better bet. For the same $$ at Andrews you can get a 10" solid tube dob that will show much more and be easier to use. I can speak from experience as I went down the exact same path and wish that I had gone straight to a dob from the beginning!!
On the other hand you may be interested in imaging. Again, this sytem is not really suitable as an imaging system as the mount is way under spec for an OTA of that size. As I am not an imager I will leave it to others to give advice if you want to go down that path.
Cheers
Malcolm
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