ATM Airline travel scope confusion

["William E. Hemple" <hemple@erols.com>]

I live in the light-polluted Washington, D.C. suburbs, but have access thru
the local astronomy club and some rural property in tidewater, Va., to
skies with a limiting magnitude of about 6 on a good night.

Soon I will be flying several times a year to spend several weeks at a time
in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburbs where I don't know the limiting
magnitude, and in a year or so I may get access to a rural location about
50 miles north of Milwaukee.

I need advice on what to get to take on a plane to and from Wisconsin.

Using a lot of ideas from the internet I recently completed a 6" f4
Dobsonian that I am only now beginning to use.  It is too bulky (plywood
tube, 26 pounds) to travel with on a plane.  I have 10X50 binoculars that I
used the past couple of winters and springs to view and learn the night
sky, but mosquitoes in the summer in tidewater defeated me so I don't yet
know much of the summer sky. 

>From my experience building the 6" and information I have seen on the
internet I am confident I could build a 10" f5.5 or f6 truss tube Dob
weighing 35-40 pounds.  Maybe I could go to 12 1/2" but that would be more
difficult to build and heavier (I don't fancy the idea of lugging around
more than 40 lbs). 

Should I travel with a home-built Dob, a refractor, a catadioptric, or only
binoculars?  Research and 'scope reviews on the internet lead only to
confusion.

At first I thought the new Meade ETX 125EC with the neat "go to" capability
would do fine ($1500 with tripod and case is stretching the budget, but
possible).  However, a number of reviewers have been under whelmed by the
construction of the ETX90 and some write one would be better off with
Televue's Pronto or Ranger.  They don't weigh much and all these 'scopes
can have more magnification for planets than my binoculars, but won't
gather more light.  Bigger refractors require heavier tripods and weigh
much more and look long, clumsy, and too vulnerable to tote on a plane to
me.  Most bigger SCTs seem to quickly bust the budget.

Viewing interest for me and my family in rough rank order would be planets,
globular clusters, open clusters, nebulae, the moon, double stars, and,
lastly, whatever else, like supernova, comets, asteroids, and galaxies.  We
are not likely to get into astrophotography any time soon. 

Ideally, I would wait around until I had more experience chasing down more
Messier objects than I have seen already and going to star parties to look
through differing 'scopes, but I need to get started soon if I am going to
build another dob and I don't want to delay too long before deciding what
to do. 

Am I overlooking any good telescope bets? or anything else?  Any advice you
 might have for me would be appreciated. 
    
                                                          Bill