Day 161: Week 23: Kilroy Hasn’t Been Here Yet Expedition to Thor's Helmet Sector : The Learning Curve Continues
15 Apr 2021Trickyhicky
161 days ago I started out from Matet in a crusty old Sidewinder as we all have. Today I am 1,226.15 lys away in the dark but still sadly in the Inner Orion Spur (IOS), but actually, when I research my position I’m not that far before I hit the point between the point of the IOS, the Outer Orion Spur and the Sanguineous Rim.Along the way I have learnt a few things, you see I have this philosophy to learn you have to make mistakes. Oh have I made a few of those along the way, but in doing so I have been able to research how not to make those errors, and if I can’t work it out myself I have been advised by other Cmdrs along the way.
I have lost three DBX Black Rat V and 1 Type 6 Black Rat VI through various misfortunes or plain silly things occurring. The most irritating of which was to get stuck in the toaster at Rominger Dock in the 78 Ursae Majoris system. Another notable loss was again Black Rat VI getting shot to shit by Pirates after my Gold cargo.
Then Black Rat V and I missed the bus to go on a trip with a New Contact Cmdr Zetr0. This turned out to be not that bad a situation as I decided to go to Sagans Research Centre at Thor's Helmet Sector FB-X c1-5 via New Growth Station in the Pencil Sector EL-Y d5 .
This is a Station carved out of an Asteroid, strange and basic but very welcome after several hundred light-years of travel. A welcome stop off and a place to sell my expedition data and bomb up on supplies. Now here I wish I had re-evaluated my loadout, mainly around the area of repair limpets.Those Repair Lympets would have come in handy as I very nearly had to call on the Hull Seals. I clattered into a landing on a mountainous planet going after my first Geological anomalies. The one thing I didn’t think about was gravity, everything falls to gravity. But when you don’t take that into account that along with speed and direction the side of a very deep valley is fecking hard, so hard that I managed to scrape the paintwork down to 15% from 100%.
So now down to 15% and almost 400 lys from a station to carry out emergency repairs I needed to find anywhere and Fleet Carriers appeared to be the best option this far out in Deep Space. According to INARA Fleetcarrier search the closest was 62.15 light-years away, the “Isrc Seventh Heaven” (K4X-W1G). It was the only fleet carrier in the system, and I understand there might be some scepticism or thoughts that I was being stupid after the recent stories in Galnet about Cmdrs being abducted and forced to work for the rogue Cmdrs (Other viewpoints are available). GALNET "WARNING OF SHIP ABDUCTIONS BY FLEET CARRIERS" . But upon hailing the carrier there was no reply other than “Computer Says No”. Even a quick message via other comms was “No Reply Repeated Knocking”. Further research afforded me the info that this wasn’t unusual where a Wing Fleet Carrier is concerned.
So feck it let's look at the problem again. So searching again I noticed that there were a few and by a few, and I mean well into the tens at a nearby system about 120 lys away. So Black Rat V was put into a 40-minute orbit and carefully refuelled at the next M class white star to make the first set of jumps to HD 63154 system and flew to the CSS Robber Roost, a carrier owned and operated, apparently, by Pirates.
The logic here was if they say they are, then they’re probably not, but I don’t know. Anyway, I was permitted land, which I did. Promptly bombed up and got the flock out of there and quickly jumped away several systems jinking left, right, up and down as this far out you just can’t be too sure.It was from this point on that I had my first real stiffy, screaming into systems that were previously not visited. These reports initially were via EDSM after getting flagged on my EDMC Pane when the EDSM plugin flashed up a little yellow star icon.
Now I had got used to reading this Cmdr was here, that Cmdr was there just like “Kilroy was here” daubed on the wall behind the bike sheds at school. Okay, I had been mapping systems using my DSS scanner for a while now, mainly as a way of collecting data to sell when I reach a station with Cartographics. But very soon I was stumbling into systems that hadn’t been visited by any Kilroy hasn’t been here.
This brought me to a new aspect of this expedition lark I had only heard about but never done. Why, well because up to this point every system had been, Honked, Scooped and in many cases even mapped, I was just learning how to do this, like a bird spreading his wings when fledging. Now I was potentially getting the data on relating to them before anyone else.
At first, I didn’t realise what was going on, I jumped into a system, refuelled, dropped out FSS, honked, 29 Bodies show up on the info panel top right of my cockpit. But on checking the Nav Panel just 1 Suns and 10 asteroid belts. I then checked my EDMC panel. Yup there it was three little stars indicating an undiscovered system in EDSM. Now interestingly I learnt early on that you can pull the page up for the system you in by clicking on a link. This time EDSM showed 1 Sun Asteroid belt and no other bodies. I’m thinking “hang on a mo I’m missing 18 other bodies?” I did a bit of research but nothing really stood out as the answer, so I went to the Discord Comms for the Intergalactic Astronomical Union or IGAU and explained the problem. Within minutes the answer was explained to me I needed to run the FSS Scanner.
Being late I landed on a nearby Icy world and settled in for the night. The following morning whilst drinking my ghastly Lakon Coffee from my Rat Pack I called up FSS scanner on from the Tube of You by our friends at “Down to Earth Astronomy” and fellow Brit “Roguey” .
In simple terms, you need to set up key bindings. If you’d like to know more then I will do a tutorial and bring it up to date for the PC as both Roguey and DtEA’s versions a little out of date, but still extremely helpful.
So, I am currently 1,235.97 ly from Sol: 1,235.97 and 22,912.96 ly from Colonia.
More Systems to FSS and DSS map my latest location before moving ever slowly to Thors Helmet and the Asteroid Station that is Sagans Research Centre 2,553 lys further on.
This is Trickyhicky in Black Rat V signing off. 07
#alearningcurve @Zetr0 @DowntoEarthAstronomy @Roguey #HullSeals #IntergalacticAstronomicalUnion #igau #edmc @FrontierDevelopments