I can only help him kick start with an intro here.
Right up to the last minute I had been contemplating if I should go due to home commitments and the rainy weather but in the end, with family activities completed, I went ahead.
Stuck in a mindless 1 hour jam at the causeway before I was underway.
Due to the delays, reached Mersing site at around 7pm where the skies was already quite dark. All the way there, we had very heavy downpour and 100% cludy skies. I was amazed that 30 km from Mersing, the rained stopped and it was actuallyt dry there!
This trip has been to satisfy a personal pent up demand as I have not been to mersing in months. there are new roads there now (no more dirt roads)
but fortunately, no street lights there yet although the sky glow from the south where mersing is and even the north seems to be brighter.
access to the old site was marred by a drain which prevented cars from driving in. Mr au also noted that it has been overrrun by buffalos!
so we deployed a a new site 100m earlier on. accessibility was bad for cars but still passable. alot of mud and my car's bottom hit the mounds a few times. felt like an SUV! the site itself is large and flat like the old one so it makes up for it.
I will try to recall who were there, so please bear with me and correct me if required.
weixing (6" Skywatcher) , richard low (C5 wired up like a nuclear reactor), elton (Tak 102 but WITHOUT his Teleport..sigh), Joo Beng + son (Orion ED80 on CG5 mount) , Yang Beng (did I get it correct? C5) , Long Tai, Mooey (Under utilised Portaball ) Matthew (LX90 plus imaging setup), Gavin (LX90 for the first time but without his trade mark super 100mm Binos). (Update : oops left out Chris Yeo! How could I?? He was there with his DIY 6" on dob mount...sorry chris ...heh ..rich ) There was also one guy from Ngee Ann astro club but I did not get his name. mr au was there earlier but went home as the sky did not meet his standards..heh heh and of course, me and my Nexstar 8 on her maiden voyage.
Sky was average. No low clouds but I suspected there was a layer higher up as star appear a little diffused. I would rate it 60% of Mersing full potential rising to 70% after 2 am.
The main programme for me apart from meeting up with old friends is to test out my N8, so I will devote my report to the N8 and leave the nitty gritty obs details to out resident columnist Mooey who will do a better job than any of us.
Also have to thank a thoughtful Richard Low (richard II) for providing hot coffee for everyone and collimation assistance for me
thanks to him for reminding me to bring batteries, I was able to get about 8 hrs worth of obs, otherwise my N8 will lie idle at the site with no power.
also, the heat packs I bought were useless so his came in handy. at 2 am when everyone's else's scopes have dewed up, mine was going strong!
he was also a reason for confusion with people calling for "richard" the whole night and we had to ask "richard I" or "richard II" ?
also thanks to Elton for giving me objects to see on the N8...I not come really prepared and not too sure what to look at.
After installing the fresh batteries and powering up, I noted the alignment process is easier than the Meade autostar but also more inflexible.
Once aligned, goto accuracy is touchy with stuff appearing near the edge of FOV even though I was using a 32mm eyepiece instead of the default 20mm. I hated the backlash too. For the autostar, you can train the scope and it auto compensate but for the celestron, I had to key in the allowance by trial and error. tedious process.
my random selection was also frustrated by this first generation goto from celestron. where the meade will show you objects you can goto, the celestron will show you everything and when I goto it, the scope will point to below horizon! this make me more cautious on what to key in.
also, I noted 90% of the time, the scope always take the longer route to goto the object, eg turning 350 deg instead of 10 deg for a nearby object and there is no way for me to cancel the goto once its commanded. as a result, my fresh alkaline batteries were exhausted by 3 am. in fact, at 2am, it was becoming lethargic. different from my etx experience where a fresh set can last me 2-3 obs. I will have to get an external battery pack (more weight!).
For performance, it has been as expected. with 8" aperture now, objects are no longer as dim as compared with my ex- etx105. I could see the ring M57 clearly and even the dumbell is well defined. The only negative point is the sky condition which was not very good to start with. the benchmark M31 appeared only as a less defined dim glow even on the N8.
Over the 6 hrs, I tried out my new focal reducer, burgess bino-viewer (17mm too high! I need to get a Meade 32mm to complement my existing one. ). I noticed the binoviewer was a little too heavy for the single fork armed and there was alot of image shaking. But overall, I had to agree that 8" is a min for people who are serious about the hobby. the ETX, while performing admirably could not yield the type of images in such a clear manner. the swan now look distinct and clear where it was only a blurred outlline on my ETX.
aperture wins! well...almost. in comparison, with Elton's Tak 102 which was next to mine, his wide views are a joy to see! He managed almost to fill the entire Veil in his FOV....nice.
Objects I cycled included M1, M2, M6, M7, M8, M11, M15, M17, M20, M22, M27, M31, M41, M45 (with focal reducer!), M57, NGC7000 (yes but partially only!!), NGC253, Tucanae 47, Blue Snowball and a whole list that Elton rattled to me. Consisted of a couple of galaxies that were brighter than M31 on that night, globular and open clusters.
richard low helped me with collimation as mine was out and this helped for Mars and Saturn's image. I also noticed some quirks in the way the motor engages itself. may have to ask albert from science centre to take a look if his support is affordable. goto was not really as good as the autostar but this is expected from the first generation of celestron goto.
I am not more familair with the scope and hopefully will have a more fruitful outing on the next trip.
ok...on to you mooey...
"The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance." 
To avoid the merry-go-round, access the Nexstar menu and turn "cord-wrap" off. But unfortunately, the Celestron software is really dumb and does not save your cord-wrap settings between sessions :roll: