Hi Chuck, With my SCT arriving back at the factory today for some very expensive repairs, I'm out of commission for a while as far as serious deep sky imaging goes. But when it comes back, I want to try again. I have a balance bar that runs along the bottom, and some weights that can be extended out from the tube on their rods. First, can you give me a quick primer on how to balance in dec (it's fairly obvious how to do it in RA). I'm assuming moving the weights up or down on the bars would do it, but I'm having trouble picturing how. More importantly, I feel certain I would have to set up and align on north first and then balance. There's just no room between the tube and the wedge for anything sticking out while it is going through the motions of aligning. But I am hesitant to loosen the settings in RA and DEC after it's set up in order to balance it -- won't that throw off the tracking? Thanks, Joe