ETX70 Debut Party at the Park

At last a fairly clear Saturday night at Bentsen SP.  It was a mere two hours before full moon and there was some haze on the horizon but we got a pretty good look at Jupiter and its moons and even a 'no way' for a viewer of the Great Orion Nebula.  This was also the ETX's debut party.  I've been wanting to include it in the scope array and my new crutch tripod worked just great.  In fact the little ETX saved my bacon tonight.  The Celestron was having trouble getting aligned and after I succeeded with a one star alignment, I couldn't find Jupiter on the list of planets.  Later I decided it was because Jupiter was too high.  The mount keeps the scope from pointing straight up.  I was able to manually point it at Jupiter but by 7:30 it was so high that I managed to bang the OTA into one of the mount legs.  Not a good thing.  The little Orion 3" had a bad battery in the finder so it was a pain to point but we managed to get it looking at the moon.  All in all, we managed to get a good look at Jupiter's moons and the Orion Nebula but the full moon pretty well washed everything out by 8:00.  The new iPad was also a big hit.  Judy came along to help and was a very good assistant.  She was able to entertain the visitors with the iPad while I reset the ETX to Jupiter.  The ETX has no problem pointing straight up but is almost impossible to focus in that position.  Judy was also able to keep the little 3" pointed at the moon.  No mean feat since it is on a cheap, hard to use mount and does not track at all.
The was our first star party of this season since it has been so cloudy but I would have to call it a success.