Ship Concept Testing - Fueluga and PALuga.
08 Mar 2022Jack Borson
Alright, in case something goes nova, figure I better start commemorating my trials.Few days ago, made what was, for me, a speed run to Colonia. Now, been there a few times; first with the Silly Ships 3 Expedition when Jaques was first found, and again a few years ago when I led a few Denners out that direction by a long route as many of them had never been out there. Silly Ships 3, I took the Outrider when she was pretty darn new; brand new shiny SLF bay even on that Keelback. The run with the Denners was with my Corvette Gjallarhorn. Since then, there's those new Engineers that popped up helping out with the suits and smallarms, so I figured why not.
Prepped up the Vethrfolnir for her first proper voyage; had finished Engineering that Beluga right before New Year, New Discoveries 3308 expedition. Was running with near 400T of fuel outbound, still getting about 45Ly. Started heading to Colonia, non-stop, not looking too hard for Neutrons or the like, just letting the plotter tell me where to go, and doing fly-bys for fuel.
Arrived in Colonia after 7 or so hours, still had half a tank of fuel. Not bad, but realized I could probably do better.
Took a bit of doin, but found a 5A AMFU in Colonia; replaced a tank with that, and added an SRV Bay to boot. Had to play with the power management to get everything running off of the 4A Power Plant I was running everything on, but got it done. Met up with the new Engineers in Colonia too.....the less I say about them the better.
Anyways, headed home with the upgraded kit. Focused on maximizing my jumps with Neutrons too. I tell you, I was able to string about 30 Neutron's together at once. FSD Reached critical a few times, but I stopped for repairs and fuel when I found a close scoopable to the Neutron which helped. That fuel scoop though.....she was working hard, but still took a few minutes to fill the 350T of tanks I still had installed!
Got home in about 3.5 hours, though. Easily half the time the outbound trip took.
Then, on to testing the Jormungand; that was the Beluga I finished outfitting and Engineering the morning we left for NYND 3308. Hadn't used Plasma Accelerators much before, so it was a full true test. Roused my SLF Pilot out of her cabin for once, got her into an Imperial SLF I had in the bay, and headed to a Haz Res.
Works better than I expected. A Beluga is a nice sturdy platform for firing the PAs from, and easy enough to turn to try and lead the bounties with. With 4 of the PAs, she does get hot, and boy does it drain the weapon capacitor.....but she works.
Spent 30 minutes yesterday hunting, and between the two of us we earned 4.5M.
Not quite good enough yet to replace the Hildr's Blessing and her quad Railguns, but certainly showing promise!
Gonna run some more tests in the coming week in between some settlement runs in the Langslangebussen, and then it's probably time to buckle down and grab some more mats to get the Gaussluga primed for testing.