Kurt, can you confirm that the impact itself will not be visible, and only the ejecta cloud can possibly be imaged?
I do not believe the impact flash will be visible. The experiment design and list of remaining candidates are such that the impact should occur below the rim of a crater and will be obscured from Earth view. Only the rising ejecta curtain that reflects sunlight will be visible. However, the final selected target crater will not be announced until around September 9 - 30 days before impact. At the same time, the Moon will be aligned and illuminated in a manner similar to that which will be seen on the date of impact. There is a theoretical possibility that NASA will announce a previously unlisted final target and that that crater's bottom is both permanetly shadowed and is visible from Earth. However, the likelihood of that is extremely small. About that same date, the LCROSS team will launch it's impact image website to collect images generated by amateurs on the morning of the event.
I would value your opinion as to whether I should continue with my plan to image this with the 32" and my hard-drive camcorder.
Yes, the Grimm scope will be an ideal place to be, assuming that the SPOC committee also has the internet connection up and running and has an internet connected PC hooked to SPOC big screen TV. Although the LCROSS team has not stated so in writing, in two public webcasts they have stated that they will stream images live from the visual camera of the shepherding satellite as it does its final experiment-kamikaze run. So, even if it clouds over at the last second or even if NASA slips the impact moment forward such that the impact ejecta cloud is lost in the advancing astronomical twilight, you'll still have something interesting to look at. E.g. a la Ranger 9 TV broadcast. Conversely, the LCROSS team's webcast of the gravity assist lunar flyby in June had a pretty underwhelming production quality. I am presently working on the lunar glare problem (whether glare from the bright side of the Moon will wash out the impact ejecta curtain) and hope to have a final answer on that by September 12. Kurt P.S. - I recommend polling the club is see if someone bought one of the new DMK21AF04 firewire cameras. That would be the camera "axe" of choice. http://www.astronomycamerasblog.com/wp-content/uploads-extra/200709_sky_and_...