Telescope Is Just Too Big

I am about ready to give up on this.  I had a Moon tonight, and I was able to get the finder aligned, but the telescope is just too heavy and long for this mount, and a mount that is adequate to the task costs about $6000.  Maybe it is time to admit that this is just beyond the scope of what I can afford -- sort of like the Ferrari you get a steal deal on, until you find out what the tuneups cost.

I just posted an ad for the optical tube assembly on Cloudy Nights Classifieds for $1200, with this picture that I took through it a couple of years ago.

Life is too short to struggle with stuff like this.  Perhaps I can use the money to buy a somewhat more reasonably sized telescope to put on the same mount.

UPDATE: The solid tube weighs 0.37 lbs./inch.  Perhaps the truss tube scheme that turned out to be too stiff for the aluminum cage needs revisiting now that I have a much more solid tube which I could cut into an upper and lower cage.  If I cut out 50 inches of the solid tube, that would save 18.66 lbs.  The truss tubes and attachments weigh 5.85 lbs.  Even if I had to use a 1/4" x 4" x 15" steel plate to attach the lower cage to the mount, that would still be a net savings of 9 lbs.  It might make sense to go with longer truss tubes so that they were mounting at the center of gravity of the lower truss.  If so, I could cut more like 60 inches out of the tube.

UPDATE 2: Darrell posted a comment but didn't want it published because it has his email in it.  But that email is bouncing, so I can't email him!  Darrell -- email at blogmail at my domain name (which is FirstnameLastname.com) so that I can get in touch.