Entry 128 - 07.20.3304
20 Jul 2018MBaldelli
Current System: NGC 4463 Sector CR-L d8-14After finishing the third leg of the exploration mission to that Wolf-Rayet Star; I had made the decision to pick up the pace just a little bit and go back to Fastest from the Economical Route I had been taking the last couple of weeks. While I'm sure I'll be missing a butt-ton of great and glorious stars and planets on a faster route; after talking with several commander through subspace -- I'm beginning to feel the tugs to go home and work on my other rankings -- rather than making money as a surveyor. This might not last, but at the moment; six weeks out is beginning to get on my nerves.
Sure, I have the company whenever I want it.
Sure, there's plenty of music and news I can be getting caught up on.
And it's not as though I interact with many commanders out here in the deep black. But there is a sort of appeal to interacting with station crew and personnel that I can't while I'm holed up in the Zheng He. Well, other than virtually. That gets tiring after a while.
And knowing me in my capriciousness, it's only a matter of time before I get sick and tired of that too and want to return to the comforts of solitude and the Deep Black. But that's not something in the here and now.
During this leg of the trip, I began developing problems with the flight controls in that whenever I was steering the Z-Axis would suddenly be pulling toward the left. It would happen infrequently, but after a while it became more and more noticeable until I was feeling like it was a fight between the ship and me as to who the captain was.
I contacted Lakon on the problem; fearing that they would be issuing a recall notice back to their shipyards for a maintenance and an overhaul. About 8 hours later they had sent me software updates and calibration tools as well as instructions for sending back telemetry information if anything goes awry.
Preliminary tests and telemetry that I had performed last night, and early this morning when I got up, indicate that the problems seems to be mostly fixed. There seems to be some sort of flutter going on as though the Zheng He is still occasionally pulling to the left, but with a deft correction everything seems to indicates to me that I'm still in control of the ship. And the Zheng He is still taking orders from me.
I have back up controls in storage and hope that -- for the moment -- they won't be needed. And am glad that I am once again Commander of the ship.
With that, it's time to continue testing and collecting telemetry information. But until then, I'm continuing to stay out in the Deep Black.