That is a superb piece of work, mahony!
On occasion I have used a low-end Gigapan scan mount to make panoramic images such as this one, which I never got round to completing:
(This used a Therm-App 384x288 with a 19mm lens and x3 telescope, if I remember correctly; it was too unwieldy to wave around by hand. Image Composite Editor, though, didn't like all the areas of black and couldn't manage to stitch the image, so I ended up doing it laboriously by hand.)
Experience shows that, in most instances, hand-held pan and scan works well enough, provided you make sure you have good enough coverage (and that comes with practice). This image was a hand-held composite:
As was this (the visible and thermal images were taken from slightly different positions, to my enduring annoyance):
Either way, I salute your experiments and look forward to seeing more results.