Orion 120ST Telescope Kit

Slowly but surely my telescope kit is taking shape. Last night we walked to a local park to do some star gazing and took the whole thing along in a wagon. Here's what it looks like all packed up.

I bought the case a month or so ago. It was designed for Orion's 110ED scope, but it turns out that my 120ST fits in it quite nicely.
Here's a closeup of the case innards. It has slots for the diagonal, two 2" eyepieces and three 1.25" eyepieces.
And here's what it looks like fully assembled.
The wooden legs are also fairly new. It is an Oberwerk surveyor tripod that I found on sale for 50% off. The legs are longer and more stable than the stock aluminum legs that come with the Voyager mount. I played around with the height for a while before settling on where it is. I raised the legs about 4 inches which allows me to see almost the whole sky from a seated position. Objects too near the horizon still require a standing position, but for the most part I can sit leisurely while stargazing.

The only drawback is that I have to squat down close to the ground in order to find objects with the EZFinder.

There are only a couple of things left to get to complete my portable telescope kit. First, I need a wide field eyepiece. The Ethos lest me see 2.17 degrees of sky at 46X. I'm thinking about a 23mm Axiom which would give me 3.14 degrees at 26x. Alternately, I'm considering jumping all the way to a 31mm or 36mm Hyperion Aspheric, which would broaden the field of view to 3.72 or 4.32 degrees respectively. (A degree is about the width of 2 full moons).

Also, I still want a new focuser. I'm seriously considering getting a Moonlite, but they are a bit pricey so it will involve saving up for it. We'll see. The stock focuser is really annoying, though and does need to be improved somehow.

Anyway, the park last night was a bit disappointing. We set up the scope near second base on one of the local ball fields. This gave us a nice wide swath of sky to view and we got to look at Saturn again. However, there were people playing tennis nearby and the court flood lights were so bright I could read by them a couple of hundred yards away. Very annoying. It turns out that my backyard it a better vewing spot due to the lack of gigantic stadium sized flood lights.

Oh well. We're starting to plan our summer vacations which will be at various dark sky spots around northern Michigan and away from big city lights. I can't wait to see some really wide field views of the summer Milky Way from a very dark site. I'm getting very excited about it.