Logbook entry

Apologies if I'm repeating earlier logs here, feel free to skip! But just to consolidate for anyone reading my nonsensical scribbles for the first time! A while back I did a little challenge to myself of doing a lap of the galaxy in my Viper mk3. This was just before the whole Gnosis/Cone thing and I wanted to get back in time, so the challenge was to do the lap in 6 days before the megaship left without me! Long story short, I managed to do it (account here); and at the time, I wondered idly how fast it could be done with a "proper" ship built for purpose. Having taken a break from Elite for a while, after coming back for a few days I was getting itchy feet and looking for something appropriately fun to do - and this idea popped back into my head!

As explained in previous logs - creating a definitive 'circumnav' is impossible, there are so many definitions! My intent was not to create something to 'compare' to other peoples' achievements, I was just doing this for my own fun. But I wanted it to meet certain criteria:

- Be simple and clean - not a myriad of hundreds of checkpoints. Just a nice, catchy simple list of checkpoints.
- Be doable in pretty much any ship - not just stripped down synthesis-boosted condas - for those who like the more unconventional craft.
- Be defined by a set of rules that, to some extent, take the decision making process out of my hands, so I feel like I'm doing something that already exists, rather than my creation?
- And lastly but most importantly - that still qualifies as a circumnavigation of the galaxy.

So, I had a good headscratch. Do I make it a cardinal points run, furthest NSEW from Sadge,  terminal stars on each arm etc etc - as I've said before, there's no such thing as "the one true circumnav"! I guess there is, the furthest possible stars, but with the whole coastline/fractals thing, you'd be out there literal years!

As I peeked at the rough time estimates and shape, the thought kinda crept in - why not turn it into a clockface? 12 points would satisfy the "simplicity" requirement, it hits the compass lines for a nice geometrical effect but with enough points between to ensure that you broadly follow a circle, without being a bajillion checkpoints. It also "removes" any element of personal bias (I know that sounds dumb since I came up with the rule!) but it "fixes" where I have to locate the checkpoint, I have to follow the rule and put it on the 30' arc line.

In order to be doable in any class of ship (for any lunatics who wanted to give it a go in a viper!), the checkpoint would have to be as far out on the outer edge as possible while still lying in stellar density of at least 40-50ly? So I borrowed the EDSM map (thanks!), drew 12 lines at 30' intervals from Sadge outwards, then followed the line as far out as possible until stellar density dropped to around my rough estimate of 40ly ish. Then plopped down a checkpoint! It wasn't a hard and fast rule - I think in reality the stellar density in most cases is a fair bit higher; but when you look at the map, you kinda see where the cluster of stars that define the arm start to peter out, so I would use that as an indicator too. Bit subjective but as you can see from the map, it works out - the points all lie on the outer edge of the arms.

So, all 12 checkpoints down. Looked at it. Hmm. Location of the checkpoints *seems* ok, but does that qualify as a circumnav? I'm a bit neurotic about this, so I ended up doing an impromptu survey, pinging the theoretical route out to tons of Elite friends & acquaintances basically asking "does that look like a circumnav or not?". Long story short - replies were basically "stop being an idiot, yes that looks like a circumnav to me!".

became:

OK! So I have a route! Next step was rough estimates - how long is this going to take? Quick distance calculations, dig out calculator - bugger. That's too many jumps - I really thought I could do it in under two days. SO - I can't just wing it and leave it up to the navcomp, I'm going to have to go out and map! But I'll need to do it in my actual race-spec ship, so the navcomp knows what to plot. Cue a couple of days of banging and tinkering noises from the hangar till my poor conda was more or less just a skeleton with a tinfoil skin and a humming FSD!

For anyone who likes tinkering - build is here. I'm certainly not saying it's the best, it's just what I used! Most of it is fairly common sense, generic range increases. The only stuff the average traveller may find a bit unusual is the 4d thrusters - those have had the drive distributor experimental applied to enable it to cope with the mass of the conda. The 2A low emissions/monstered power plant is a personal choice - I generally prefer to keep things as cool as possible to allow for quicker spooling of the drive around hot stars, every little counts! The AFMUs are three pairs of size 6 and 4 - the reason being, when I drop out for repairs, if I shut down thrusters/fsd/guardian booster, I have just enough power to initialize one 6 and one 4, hence speeding repairs; this worked out to be faster and more efficient than running two size 5's concurrently.

The worst bit was the fuel tanks - to 32 or not to 32, that was the question! I nipped out and started mapping not knowing what to expect, but it became clear that 32 tons of fuel was probably unnecessary - this wasn't like the Core, where you can easily hit long chains of neutrons one after the other. I ended up turning around only 10k into the mapping to come back to the bubble and refit to a total of 24t of fuel - this would allow 3 neutrons and change before scooping, which was roughly the most I would ever come across out there, at best guess. That done, I headed back out and began the fairly tedious process of scouring the space between each checkpoint on the galmap, marking out the neutrons; then proceeding to fly the leg slowly, testing the navcomp - would it jump via the neutrons I wanted it to, or do I have to shorten the plot etc etc...

A couple of weeks (and a vacation) later and I drifted back home rather tired but with a nice big fat spreadsheet filled with hundreds upon hundreds of rows of "mini-legs", tagged with distances and really technical notes like:

and

SO professional.

Right! Revised jump count with the helping hand of a bunch of neutrons is looking more doable. More furious scribbling - ok, so, in theory if I keep up a really solid jump rate, with 5min breaks at each checkpoint, assume about 20 repairs, average plot time per mini-leg 10seconds, factor in neutron jump charging times, allowing four hours of snooze in between  - it should be doable in two days. Just!

Night before the event....was a disaster.

Worked like a slave all week to make sure my Friday was free (needed to have Sunday free to recover/sleep for work on Monday!) and finally 'cleared my desk' Thursday. Fantastic! Dragged my coffee machine over to my desk, stocked up on supplies etc - good to go! Went to bed...



...and got hit by random insomnia. Wonderful. Completely relaxed, not tense at all, mind blank, just couldn't sleep. Which led to cursing and more no-sleep. Eventually managed to doze for about a few hours before it was time to get up and get going. NOT a good start! I took my proof-of-progress screenies at the start and headed off - and within a few jumps I was cursing my stupid body for not letting me sleep the night before - I already felt like death! I was really excited to get going but at the same time had the inevitable feeling that this was going to suck big time.

Proof screenies:
Start (6 o'clock cp)
7 o'clock cp
8 o'clock cp
9 o'clock cp

I started from the 6 o'clock checkpoint (with 12 checkpoints in all, I basically referred to each as a location on a clockface) and headed over towards 7 o'clock. It was a fairly easy leg, plenty of main-sequencers, so no drama, but it did have enough neutrons for me to perfect my charge-plot-jump process...

Basically, I had built up a route of a few hundred "mini-legs", each terminating on a neutron star. To plot to the next leg, I'd obviously tab into the galmap, quickly cut and paste the system from my spreadsheet, navigate over, hit the "plot" button, then pop out of the galmap - all of which could take several seconds or half a minute, depending on the leg! Might not sound like much but over the course of two days it adds up - if you assume 10 seconds on average per plot, you're looking at nearly 50 minutes time wasted in the galmap alone!

SO - plan; once in the stream of the neutron, it takes a while to supercharge the fsd, several seconds say. So if I 'skid' into the neutron's tail, line up, then pop in the galmap and plot while the fsd charges, by the time I pop back out of the galmap, the fsd should have finished charging and soon after, the plot should complete and I can jump! Which sounds a bit hairy, but I was in a nice big fat conda, they don't wobble that much in a neutron tail so I didn't have to worry about getting turned around while I was tabbed out and rammed into the exclusion zone. Still, the first few times of tabbing into the galmap while swirling around in the cone was a little scary! But it would save valuable time - the way I thought of it was, fifty minutes more sleep! So a definite must do - and after a while, I got fairly comfortable with the process.

Before I knew it, I was reaching the 9 o'clock checkpoint - the south-west quadrant done! And it was immediately apparent I was WAAAY ahead of schedule This was always going to be the easiest quadrant - I knew from mapping that there was a lovely, healthy string of neutrons scattered along the route, even picking up three in a row sometimes, interspersed with nice relaxing chains of main-sequence stars where I could disengage brain and just comfortably jump. Even so, I was surprised at how far ahead of schedule I was, but better that than late I figured!

Proof Screenies:
10 o'clock cp
11 o'clock cp
12 o'clock cp

This one started fine. Bit sparse with the neutrons, sure, but there were enough initially and I was doing fine plodding up the Scutum-Centaurus arm. But about halfway along, I started feeling pretty tired, just as I was approaching The Abyss, which as anyone who has been up there will tell you, is a little bit of a pain - quite sparse stars leading to some fairly ping-pong travel even in my long-legged beastie of a conda! So it was a little demoralising to watch the progress slow down to a crawl as I bounced back and forth through the Abyss. Still, the moment I made the turn off the Scutum-Centaurus arm and started that last stretch across to Beagle was a great pick-me-up. And before long I was dropping into Good Old BP, hurrah!

I hadn't extended my time buffer at this point but I also hadn't lost time. Things were looking good, despite being ridiculously tired; the annoying thing is, I think I hit Beagle around the seventeen hour mark and just kept thinking "I would feel fine right now if only I'd had a decent night's sleep last night!" Anyway - I gave myself a good ten minute break here, dunked face under water, ran around outside a bit for some fresh air, then back to the cockpit!

Proof Screenies:
1 o'clock cp
2 o'clock cp
3 o'clock cp

I'm going to sound like SUCH a drama llama here but god this was awful! The plan had been to try and make the 1 o'clock checkpoint, then nap for four hours. I was feeling pretty tired at this point and very much looking forward to a nap! Managed to struggle through the 12->1 oclock leg, which was a bit of a chore, very few neutrons to ping me along. But finally made it; cued up the next mini-leg, quick repair cycle started and headed to bed to nap.

And couldn't sleep >.< That wonderful buzzy hell that I'm sure everyone has experienced at some time where your head is just far too busy, despite feeling tired! And all I kept thinking was that I'm just losing time while not even getting rest. So very stupidly decided bugger it, get up, and carry on jumping. So I think I was in bed for all of ten minutes before getting up to resume jumping! The next two legs were pretty grim, not going to lie BUT - made it to the 3 o'clock checkpoint safely enough.

4 o'clock cp
5 o'clock cp
6 o'clock cp

At this point, I had (more or less) been jumping continuously for 25 hours and was feeling pretty grim BUT - I was stupidly far ahead of my projected time. Which was a really good kick in the butt. And somehow I was starting to feel a bit better! Unfortunately this made me start thinking - can I do it in under 36 hours if I keep going? Circumnav in a day and a half sounded kinda fun! So I decided to carry on.

Only problem was this quadrant was, without doubt, by far the worst of all four. It involved transitioning from the Sagittarius-Carina Arm onto the Perseus Arm. And literally anyone who has ever made that jump down at the Centaurus Reach out to Tenebris will tell you that it's a cast iron bitch, pardon my swahili! Some of my spreadsheet "mini-legs" were literally single jumps to a neutron, or maybe 10 main sequence stars? The first three mini-legs of the 3 to 4 O'clock stretch however took nearly an hour and a half

And it just kept going! The slog out to 4 o'clock, then on down to 5 o'clock was pretty horrendous. After thirty straight hours of jumping I was getting pretty dizzy and rather motion sick Swirling around in neutron cones was NOT fun and I was kinda glad there weren't that many for once! This'll sound SO ridiculously melodramatic for a fricking computer game but it really wasn't much fun and I genuinely honest-to-god recall at one point jumping into a system, and for a few seconds staring at my keyboard because I couldn't remember how to plot a leg! Not very healthy

Fortunately I started feeling a bit better as I closed in on the Outer Arm Vacuus, the last hop out to the Outer Arm and the start/finish line at the 6 O'clock checkpoint. And as I got down to my last two mini-legs, both long chains of nice easy main-sequence stars, it was easy to see I was going to finish under the 36 hour mark - comfortably enough that I started chatting with friends on discord and getting really lazy with my jumps - I think I probably lost a good 10minutes at this point but I didn't care, I was going to finish in 35 hours something anyway.

And just under a day and a half after I'd first left, I rolled back into Phloisc SR-H D11-4.  :D

Okey dokes! The fun bit! So after all that, basing the elapsed time off my proof-of-location screenies, the total challenge stats were:

35 hours 28 minutes 47 seconds
272,191 light years
2,477 jumps

Supporting pics from codex:
Start
9 o'clock cp
12 o'clock cp
3 o'clock cp
Finish

(Time verified by comparing Proof screenies, see above)

Some fun stats:
2.13 light years per second
51.57 seconds per jump
109.89 light years per jump

In the first 24 hours, I covered 185,542 light years - that's the same distance as going from Sol to Beagle point , then back to the bubble, then back to Sadge A*, then back to the bubble, then another ~3200 light years travel Which again, doesn't sound tooo crazy, but it was all done via rim travel

I didn't use any fsd boost synthesis, not because I'm trying to show off but because I'm cheap  :D And in all honesty, I haven't really had time to go out and farm any. My dear old conda was able to make it out to Ishum's/Salomé's on the mapping run (just for fun) without needing any boost! I started exploring in the good old pre-engineering days when anything over 40 light years was big business - now my same beloved conda was jumping almost 83 light years, just an incredible difference!

I was absolutely astonished to see that I had managed to average a per-jump rate of 51.57 seconds - that really did surprise the heck out of me. Everyone who's done any long travel jumps will know about the magic "45 second" marker, the minimum time it's possible to jump cycle in (barring latency and so on). Even if I'd taken zero breaks and every jump had been a MS jump, ignoring plotting time too - there is simply no way I would've been able to keep that up for the duration. Aside from some stars being too perfectly lined up, too big and hot etc (my poor conda was burning huge amounts of fuel and had to be fairly diligent about keeping her tanks topped up as I jumped!) to realistically hit 45seconds without incurring heat damage (and hence necessitating repair time) - I'm just not capable of keeping my focus like that for that long. I'm sure others could but not I!

Now factoring in neutron jumps taking longer than a conventional MS jump, plotting time (despite my best efforts to overlap it with neutron charging), breaks and thank god, only two server disconnects - I really cannot believe it averaged out to under 52 seconds per jump. I'm sure that number sounds terrible to anyone who has done shorter challenges, but I'm chuffed to bits with it

Can this route be done faster? Absolutely, no question. I'm not making excuses but I started this race feeling exhausted - with a good night's rest it would have been immeasurably easier, I would have been a lot more focussed and alert. It's one of the reasons I'm kinda amazed at my per jump time! As I closed in on the finish as I say, I was practically goofing off and chatting with people, forgetting to jump the moment the fsd had cooled! My breaks weren't always "necessary" but I took them anyway and I wasted that time trying and failing to sleep. I also think in retrospect that with more diligent mapping and tweaking the fuel tanks, you could save quite a lot of time. So I'm happy with this as a first attempt "proof of concept" run - but I genuinely think it's possible to get this down to the low 30's.

I really wanted to give this funny route a name. And anyone who followed my lap in my Viper might remember I named her Amelia That kinda stuck with me here, so I decided to call the route The Earhart Loop, as a little homage to a great adventurer whom I respect The whole circumnav thing obviously resonated a bit too.

If anyone wants to give this thing a go, as I said before - please do take care of yourself and don't overdo it! It is intended purely as a bit of fun, not for bragging or showing off, I can't stand that - it's just a personal challenge. I know people will inevitably try and compare this with other circumnavs and I absolutely do NOT want that - anyone who does a lap of our galaxy is a legend in my book, however long it takes or whatever route they follow, I think it's a wonderful achievement! This was just ONE of the many ways you can do a lap, that's all.

If you want to give this a go - a slight change to what I wrote in prior logs. I think we should define the start as the 6 oclock checkpoint (nearest to the bubble) and I think we should say go in a clockwise direction. The reason for this is simply that the time investment if you want to pre-map your route is considerable, let alone the actual event. I don't want people who do it having to think "did I choose the right direction? Would it be quicker going this way? What if I start from here instead?" - and feeling like they got screwed over by choosing "the wrong method". So that being the case, yep - southern start, clockwise run.

Last but not least! It's just a bit of fun - I call it a challenge, but it's just for fun. Whether you speed around in a perfect blistering 32 hours, or take your time and do it in a week or two or a month - whatever, that's fantastic! Please do let me know if you give it a go and who knows, if we ever get space legs we can celebrate the Earhart-ers in a bar in Colonia someday

I know this is starting to sound REALLY over the top! It's not the fricking Oscars! But credit where it is absolutely due, I wanted to thank all the poor people who kindly answered my dumb survey as to whether the route was valid as a circumnav, very much appreciated; the lovely people who pinged messages of support/suggestions of nearby mental institutions; and everyone who kindly reads my dopey inane scribbles on Inara - I am profoundly aware they are utter nonsense most of the time and am continuously amazed anyone bothers to read! I'd write them anyway, they're just fun for me, but I won't lie, it's lovely to know people read them too.

I'd also just like to say thanks to the Buckyball Racing Club for their kind words - not to make too much of an idiot of myself (that ship has well and truly sailed!) but I've been a huge fan of you guys ever since seeing Cmdr Alot's hilarious and frankly awesome A* youtube videos, so your congrats meant an awful lot!

Finally - huge, huge HUGE thanks to the following: Cmdr Stormysan for putting up with my endless nattering during my mapping project with the patience of a saint! Cmdr Ziva for just being ridiculously supportive despite thinking (correctly) that I'm being a donut Cmdr Captain_Moustache for being the best rum-infused flying buddy in existence and keeping me sane during the witching hours! And Cmdr Phelbore for being my personal motivational statistician and keeping me awake during the near-coma fourth leg! I say this all the time but I've never meant it more - I really don't think I could have done this one without your support! You guys are stars, thank you so much!