Pixies

I found the best upgrade I've done was to replace the straight finder with a RACI (right angle, correct image) finder and a Telrad. There are multiple threads discussing this arrangement, and I think that there will be several more posters along shortly, to suggest the same thing. You can use the Telrad (or Rigel Quikfinder) to find the starting target, then on to the RACI to start star-hopping. Because the RACI displays the sky as you see it (and as sky charts show it) it does make star-hopping much easier. Your Bortle 5 skies won't be any issue with finding these things. M101 is going to be the hardest to find, but M81 and M82 are relatively bright - but small. Here's how I find them: Start with Ursa Major. There are more stars than just the 'big dipper'. With Bortle-5, you should be able to see them all. Find the 2 stars parallel to and beyond Dubhe and Merak, follow their line to a small bright triangle of stars. The telrad would be good for this. Then with the RACI, follow the direction back along to the bowl of the Big Dipper - almost like the way the triangle points to - until you find another bright pair of stars These two stars are good indicators to the location of M81 and M82. If you have the stars in the finder view, you should have the galaxies too. Switch to a low powered eyepiece and hunt them out. Remember - in the EP, the view will be reversed. If you have a pair of binoculars, you can test out the star-hop before you use the scope.

Excellent (the scope, not the clouds). Did FLO say what they had to do?

Cool. The small cluster you saw is the Pleiades - it is a good binocular target. The Hyades is good too - larger and less dense, around Aldebaran in Taurus (half-way between the Pleiades and Orion). A bit further east is the Beehive cluster in Cancer. Theses are all great in medium bins.

Here's a previous thread. And includes a link to a manual: https://www.telescope.com/assets/product_files/instructions/29370_07-09.pdf

The Baader Classic Orthos might be another good consideration. A tenner more, but they have the same 50deg FOV as the Vixen plossls

Kill your dark-adaption too. I keep the lights on around me. And you have to sit comfortably at the eyepiece for a good length of time, in order to catch the moments of good seeing. Slowly your eyes/brain will start to distinguish features. You'll need 100x magnification plus, too. I would say. Your scope is 650mm focal length? Perhaps a higher powered EP than your 10mm would be suitable. Higher magnification will dim the planet slightly too. I've had my best views at 150X - 200x recently. You won't necessarily need an expensive EP, though.

http://sweiller.free.fr/collimation.html#chapter5

That looks pretty good. The reticle program is called "Mire De Collimation". Google it for the link.

That's perfectly circular. just slightly off-centre, but we're being fussy now. You can either fine-tune it or head back to the next stage.

get the Cheshire closer. Is still looks very slightly oval, with the bits marked in blue wider: You just need to rotate the top (in the picture) away from you just a wee bit. Does that make sense? If you get the Cheshire closer, it will be more obvious. But you are nearly there.

Just get the Cheshire tighter and tighter towards the secondary. You should end up with the circles almost touching - then you'll know they are completely concentric. Like this: (There is a gap between them) Yours still looks the same to me: It can be frustrating. The first time I did it, I gave up and came back the next day - then got it straight away. Get the Cheshire a little bit closer, then try loosening the secondary a bit and watch down the Cheshire as you manipulate the holder and see how it looks as you rotate and tilt it.

I think you can get the secondary alignment better (stage 1). It still looks rotated to me. IE: not a perfect circle. I think the top of the secondary (in the image) can be rotated towards you a bit. It's a pain, I know. But once you get this sorted, the rest is a breeze. And you won't have to do it again unless you take the secondary out, or drop the scope!

It's so hard to say with photos. The different focus between the doughtnut and the crosshairs make it hard to get an image to use here. Can try to get a pic focussed on the doughnut, not the crosshairs? If you can see that the doughtnut is under the crosshairs, then great. But looking at the top pic - just make sure the secondary hasn't rotated.

No problem - that just shows you how far out you were to start with. Ignore all the reflections - just get the doughnut under the cross-hairs. It might take a few shots to work out which adjusters you need to use, it's tricky when you can't just keeps your eye looking down the Cheshire while you do it - that's why so many replace the allen screws with thumbscrews. Anyway - get stuck in, but make sure you don't loosen things off enough the secondary rotates. You'll find you will have to loosen one a 1/4 turn, say, and tighten another the same amount (or the other 2 a wee bit) in order to keep the overall tension the same. Don't go backing one off a large amount, or tightening. Baby steps and keep the overall tension as equal as possible.

Been there, done that. As long as you can get the secondary in the positions you need, you're fine. I ended up in a situation where whenever I tightened the secondary, it slipped back into the same position because of these (a won't say 'dimples', more like craters). One can fit a steel washer between the secondary adjust surface and the screws - but hopefully you don't need that. OK - let us know how things go with the next stage.

Wait until you've finished with the secondary. And even then - just snug enough to make sure nothing moves. You can damage things if you overtighten - even end up scoring dimples into the secondary holder so it's hard to do any future rotation changes. If you can't rotate the secondary by hand, it's tight enough. But you can worry about that after you have done the next stage. You probably haven't finished with those adjusters yet.

That looks great. Did you edit you previous post? Now you can remove the paper and see what's involved for the next stage - adjusting the secondary tilt so that the cross-hairs align with the doughnut.

That's a lot better! Did you back off the 3 adjust screws before you tried to bring the secondary back up the tube (by turning the centre screw clockwise)?

Have a watch of this: Bear in mind that when setting the mount up, he says "longitude" when he means "latitude".

OK. You need to bring the secondary back up the tube (away from the primary) and rotate it a wee bit, too I think. As you are using paper, and there are no reflections, you can point it at a lamp and get a nice contrasty view.

You need to do it with the Cheshire acting as a 'sight-tube'. Get it closer to the secondary - then you can see how close to round and centered it is. For example:

And as @John says, you really need to observe for a good 10-15 mins. Also, forget about dark adaption. I keep the house lights on!

No. He means that it's more important to 'hit the doughnut' than have the image of the primary perfectly contained within the secondary mirror. You most definitely want the secondary to appear as a perfect circle (concentric within the Cheshire) - that means it is aligned under the focuser.

@popeye85 - what sized Cheshire do you have? I found the shorty ones to be much harder to use as the difference in focus distance between the cross-hairs and the doughnut to be too much for my eyes. Yours are much younger though.

Yeah - Astro Baby doesn't really mention Cheshires. Don't worry about trying to align the outer-edge of the primary (clips, etc.) just adjust the secondary tilt so that the cross-hairs hit the doughnut. Sometimes this can be hard to confirm, as the crosshairs are so close to the eye. Once you've done that, you can adjust the primary so that the black eye-hole dot is exactly inside the doughnut. What size Cheshire are you using?