14 FEBRUARY 3308 - BRIEFLY BACK TOGETHER
14 Feb 2022Edwore Golores
The wait is over: my beloved Vulture, until recently in a state of neglect and decay, is back to its former glory and then some!Last month, I rediscovered the Intrepid Impala in a long term storage dock in Rhea, where I had left it years earlier. After some trouble sourcing parts locally, we limped over to Sol, where I spent a very relaxed couple of weeks planetside on Mars while the Impala enjoyed its own time at the galaxy's preeminent Core Dynamics spa on Mars High.
Initially, the plan was just to replace the faltering power plant and get a fresh coat of paint, but once the extent of the hull corrosion became apparent, we went into full do-over mode.
Taking delivery
The stock power plant, which was undersized to start with, and in bad condition, was thrown out, and replaced with a 4A G3 overcharged version. The ship was running pretty hot, but after applying a thermal spread plate, the temperature was more or less under control, and power is now seamless. Even with new fully A-rated thrusters, distributor and a bank of four shield boosters, there is still a little leftover juice to go around, and this buck flies like a dream! The outer hull armour needed to be replaced as well, and this is where my most questionable expense happened: I let the engineers talk me into fitting reactive surface composite armour. I have never bothered with this on any of my other combat ships, but the team assured me I will appreciate it if I ever go up against railgun fire.
The original burst laser + multi-cannon loadout was retained, but thoroughly cleaned and restored.
I decided to keep the old Federal red colour, but a shade brighter and with some white detailing
The long term goal of this project is to fully engineer drives, shields and weapons on the Impala as well, but I want to take her out for some bounty hunting in her current, mostly unengineered state to see how she fares against some pirates now as a baseline reference.
Unfortunately, since our carrier group shipped out to the Nauni system yesterday to support search and rescue efforts following the Thargoid attacks, the only things I will be firing this week, are rescue limpets. As a consolation, I get to do it in our fleet's brand new SAR Anaconda. It's not fast, it's not agile, but it is VERY red. And, with low emissions and thermal spread mods, it's the coolest thing I have ever flown in a very literal sense!
The brand new SAR ship, the Cool Tempest was delivered to our carrier, the TFCS Seemeeu, just last week