Where to start with the gear I have, and what to purchase in the future?

Course I don't mind. I didn't feel the image was good enough to bother fiddling with myself! And if that's the sort of shot you want, I'm sure you won't have too much of a problem...most people's Milky Way shots are far better than mine!

Adrena1in wrote in post #7161061
As for the stars moving, the stacking programme I use, called Deep Sky Stacker, (FREE download), is clever in that it can move and rotate each frame in order to line up all the stars. When I first started out I shot 39 x 30s frames of the Milky Way, 18mm, over the course of 50 minutes or so. No tracking, just a fixed tripod sat on the bench in my garden. The stars moved loads in that time, (almost 1/24th of their journey around the earth!), yet Deep Sky Stacker successfully aligned all the frames and produced a satisfying (for me) result.

Thanks again —*and I'd love to see more of your photos!!!
All of my landscape work is stitched panos (usually around 60+ images stitched), so bringing that concept into astro is even MORE exciting (like your example above)!!!
Now, I just can't WAIT for the summer (and I'm a winter kinda guy)!
And in the next week or two I have an appointment to check out some tracking eq mounts — very exciting!
k.

theboyk wrote in post #7169670
Thanks again —*and I'd love to see more of your photos!!!

Thanks, but mine are nothing compared to what a lot of people here are producing. Though I suppose I've made the initial steps and I'm able to produce images I'm quite happy with. I ought to investigate setting up my own website and putting the images up there I suppose. Be interesting for myself if nothing else...a way to look back at what I've achieved, and each year try to get better.