Some thoughts on telescopes for your attention. Choosing f ratio: for astrophatograhy you need shorter f/ratio while for observing of planets you should have longer f/ratio. Keeping in mind a portability I guess your choose should be between f/4-f/5.
As concerning to difficulties to make the first scope with f/4-f/5 mirror... It depends on your overall skill. Some mounths ago I help a guy to build his first scope. It's a 8" Cassegrain with f/3 primary. He just asked me about mirror's making and have doing all work by himself. As a result he have build very nice and very portable telescope which weight only 20 kg with good quality optics. You can look at it's photo at my home page : http://hea.iki.rssi.ru/~yas/hp.html This is really portable telescope. It has f/8 Cassegrain focus and one can install a focal lenght reducer for astrophotograhy. So, you may choose the same optical scheme for your telescope but keep f/4 for primary mirror. This will reduce difficulties of parabolization of the mirror. I'm not recommend for you to make Schmidt-Cassegrain due to it's more complicated design. You are welcome to contact with me freely if you wish. I've made a few mirrors by myself, so I guess I might help you on this subject.
Ciao, Alexander Yascovich yas@hea.iki.rssi.ru
PS. Keeping in mind: To make a good optics is more cheaper, eaiser and will take less time then to make a good mounting!