Entry 74 - 08.22.3303
22 Aug 2017MBaldelli
Current System: Tchehen, Crook PortI got back to home port a lot faster than I expected yesterday. This was mainly because (surprisingly) most of the systems I was cutting through back to the Bubble were either star-only system or had nothing more than Rocky-Ice and Ice Worlds orbiting them than I had seen in my time out in the Deep Black.
Made quite a bit more money than I did the last time I was out doing surveying: 22.5 million credits. Enough to change my cycle in the bubble this week. Off to bounty hunt I'm going. And in my fleet now is the Praetorian: an unmodified Eagle MK II. I've thought about getting the ship tinkered a little bit by the engineers I have access to, but there are still some data and materials that I need to collect.
I even got the Praetorian blooded this morning to boot. Wasn't all that much of a blooding: Dropped out of Super-cruise in the system next to Tchehen and checked out a Convoy Dispersion Pattern. Was a pretty harmless -- though wanted -- Adder that I wanted to test out my weapon configuration on. Didn't take much to expedite the Adder, and while the bounty was pretty damned low -- I reminded myself I haven't done any sort of bounty hunting for a long, long time. So, it's a start.
Headed over to a Low Security Resource Extraction site with the excitement of doing a little more bounty hunting, but ended up finding that it was a lawless area. While I'm going to need the resources, I would prefer not to hit wings without proper security in place or flying buildings simply for the freighter bits.
One of the several niggling things I'm going to need to get used to is the fact that I'm flying with a significantly smaller fuel tank than I'm used to. While I did outfit the Praetorian with a fuel scoop, it's significantly smaller than the Zheng He's or Leif Eiriksson's which means I'm spending more time orbiting a star for a complete refueling. Or I'm going to have to bee-line to a station for a refuel.
Another is the engines while having hellish boost and good speed in such a small ship, they don't have the deep, throaty roar I'm used to with the ASPX or DBX with the Eagle, at least it's not like the wheeze I often hear when I'm ferrying to Sol on a Dolphin.
One final note. Seeing I have swapped out the shield array on the Eagle for Hull reinforcement, I noticed immediately when hitting stations: my ship isn't remotely being scanned by local system authorities. I might want to consider trying out a little smuggling or some of the more illicit work necessary for some local factions to get a feel on it -- especially when you consider one of the engineers requires it.
Well, I'm going to take advantage and get used to the sounds and the smaller fuel tanks: but other than those issues, I have to say, I like the Praetorian's maneuverability.