Go for Friday! (& Race Route)
31 Jul 2019LongDistanceClara
Barring lightning strike/freak rain shower of cows/spontaneously turning into jam etc, am finally a "go" for race start this Friday. Bit excited but if I'm perfectly honest, really not looking forward to the sleep deprivation bit - it's only the one night, but 44 hours of jumping in a 48 hour period is going to be a little grim I'm sure! Enough drama queening about a computer game 
It's just a bit of a giggle - I know it will seem spectacularly pointless and dumb to a lot of folks and they're absolutely right
But Elite (at least for me) is one of those games where you have to invent your own content, so why not.
As promised, graphic below with the 12 checkpoints. If anyone wants to do it, I'd say let's keep it simple - you can start from anywhere you want and go either direction, clockwise or anti-clockwise - you just have to hit each checkpoint. I have had a few people ping me on discord and Inara saying they're interested in doing this challenge themselves - absolutely, have a giggle (stay healthy if you do!
). BUT - and I know I keep saying this but judging by some of the messages it's not self-evident - if you've not travelled the rim, please be aware that it's not like taking the sadge or BP routes and simply multiplying the time versus distance to give an estimate. If that were the case, you could do the whole lap in under a day! It is a very different kettle of fish scuffling around on the rim as opposed to running through the Core, so please make sure you're prepared for that if you do want to give it a go. That having been said - it's just a bunch of jumps, all the very best to anyone bored enough to do it!If the graphic looks a bit wonky, I think it's just the parallax skew from the source image, but in theory at least, the target systems are located on 30' arcs or near-as-dammit to give the Galactic Clockface. Obviously this is a "hand-made" graphic, I've tried to make it as accurate as I can by using galactic coords from EDSM and in-game, but apologies if there's any disparity, though if there is any it should be very minor indeed!
I'll be leaving late morning Friday 2nd August from the 6 o'clock checkpoint, heading clockwise up the Outer Arm -> Mare Desperationis -> Scutum Centaurus -> Abyss -> Sagi-Carina, ideally reaching the 1 o'clock checkpoint before short sleep break, but at bare minimum, I must have passed Beagle before stopping. Next day will just consist of heading on down Sagi-Carina -> passing Tenebris -> Perseus Arm -> Outer Arm Vacuus and back to the 6 o'clock finish line, within 48 hours of departure, so before late morning Sunday 4th August - hopefully!
I will be doing it in a squadron PG I'm afraid for obvious reasons, but will as usual be taking "proof screenies" on the way!
This is a terrible idea.
Wish me luck! 
