Entry 59 - 08.01.3303
01 Aug 2017MBaldelli
Current System: Deciat, Farseer BaseI snuck out late last night from Newholm Station ensuring that I wouldn't hit any remnant and active forces of Operation: Sirius Business as I wasn't entirely sure whether there was a pause between the phases or whether it was a mop-up sort of effort. I had a bit of a problem when it came to getting to Sol from Sothis, seems that instead of aiming for Earth, the Nav-Computer aimed me for Solati instead. When I was within 90 LY and saw that I had 5 jumps left that I knew something was off. With the confusion averted, I simply re-plotted my course to Earth and stopped there to cash in a little of the exploration data before launching and aiming for Davis Terminal in the Duamta System where it was confirmed that I could buy the Asp Explorer and many of the components. Didn't buy it last night however as I wanted to be sharp and not screw up any purchases or traveling to getting the parts. I might have the money, sure -- but I don't want to lose money based on an accidental purchase and refund.
So it was checking into the local hostel, enjoying the station-side down time and waiting until the morning to start racking up the credit loss for the purchase.
Surprisingly I was able to purchase at least a quarter of the necessary components in Davis Terminal before shipping out to the next location for purchases: Wang City (also in the Duamta System). And what a charlie-foxtrot Wang City was. First I end up behind a flying Apartment Building as it's making its approach through the mail slot only to bang into the toaster grille on the outside -- with a rather loud clang -- as I'm within 300 meters of it happening. Instead of backing up and trying again, that commander aborts the approach and landing permit scraping by me with less than 10 meters of the canopy glass.
Not a good omen for being in the new ship for less than 10 minutes.
20 minutes later as I get departure instructions, halfway to the mail slot, I find that I'm running out of the station with Emergency Life Support on and having only 5 minutes of air, I began panicking that something was wrong with the Fuel Scoop installation. Between re-requesting a landing berth and trying to turn around to land, it dawned on me when I was looking at the Control Panel that the Fuel Scoop was over-drawing power from the 5E power plant. I shut down the shields, cancelled the docking request and realigned myself for my FSD jump back to the Sol System.
I finished up the A-Level build-out getting into Sol and after picking up a 3A AMFU from Magnus Gateway from EZ Aquarii, the next thing I need to do was head over for a visit with Felicity Farseer in the Deciat System. Apparently turning in some of the scan data I did when I was heading to Deciat has given me the knowledge of another Engineer: Juri Ishmaak.
Some hours later at Farseer's Base, I've been able to get her to tinker with the Scanners, FSD and Power Plant. I know the FSD isn't as good as the Leif Eiriksson's but it's only a couple of light years short of that... The rest? I'll have to check the information and plug it into the Coriolis to see what's improved.
Tomorrow, I'll be putting the Zheng He through it's paces and to perform the usual shakedowns on the hull, components and equipment.