Today I finished my mission of scanning all of the notable stars above Colonia. Yesterday I had been discouraged that pretty much all of them had been previously discovered. My saving grace was that all of them were pretty much by different people. My hope was once there was enough of a barrier of already discovered notable systems, that people would have given up and gone elsewhere, and that seemed to be the case. The layer of Carbon stars wasn't all that thick when I got up there. I had maybe 50 bookmarks to check out when I left probably the first 20 were all taken, and after that I would say like 25 out of there last 30 weren't. Once I finished I turned around and flew back. I only found 1 ELW on the trip but it was still pretty profitable. 1 single system on my way back netted me over 23mil credits. After I sold off my data I decided to outfit my Krait MkII for mining so I could finish the Engineer's quest. I'll go see if I can find the required materials tomorrow, which should be in the rings of the planet Jaques happens to orbit.

Today I decided to work with the engineers in the Colonia area. One of them was already unlocked and ready to go. 1 I needed to go farm some occupied escape pods, which I did. The last one needed me doing a bit of mining, but it was already taking so long that I decided I'd do it later rather than outfit a mining rig. I then decided I wanted to go on an adventure in my Asp again. I decided to fly straight up from Colonia and stop at many systems I bookmarked such as carbon stars, Neutrons, black holes and carbon stars. I didnt get super far, but as of now, pretty much everything of note I've stopped at has been explored. I'll head back over to my favorite area tomorrow if the rest dont pan out. Otherwise, there wasn't much of note today. I did finally figure out how to fix my stick roll and pitch drift. It was starting to get really bad. I tried so many things to fix it, and finally I saw a thread on how to set the deadzone in game.

After writing my log last night, I decided to head out in my Asp to go get that ELW i forgot to map. It was only like 50 jumps and I thought maybe I could poke around while I was there. So last night I flew out while targeting systems with a mass code of D hoping to find a ringed ELW. Spoiler alert: never found one. 1 system prior to the system I left the ELW in I found another one. I mapped it, flew to the other system and scanned the one I came for. At that point I called it a night. At some point today when I sat down to play I decided to stick around that area and try to farm Neutron Stars. I had already found 3 ELWs right in that tiny area so I thought I'd stay there. There were dozens and dozens of Neutrons in the area and maybe 80% had not been claimed. At one point I found an ELW revolving around a T type and L binary which was all going around a Neutron star. That was pretty cool, but I really wanted to find one that was directly going around a Neutron. The absolute next jump I found what I was looking for. This was still in that same tiny area I had found the other 3 ELWs in. I proceeded to search many more and even found a few unclaimed black holes. I'm about to get back on for an evening session. My plan is to make my way to a Nova I had seen when flying out here. After that I'll head back to Colonia tonight to drop all my new finds off. It's not crazy far out to that area with all the ELWs. I think tomorrow I might run back out there and either look through low luminosity A stars, or F stars with D mass codes. If I had enough for a fleet carrier I'd drive it out there and park it for a while. My ASP is a beast though now that it jumps 60lys. I know I could push that farther, but its not something I'm concerned with just yet.

I logged on this morning and set a new target route: Colonia. Turned out that I had 50 jumps left, but still no big deal. As I drew closer I got more nervous. I was fearing losing the entirety of my data. At I believe 13 jumps from Colonia I almost had a heart attack. As I jumped into the system there were a few frames that made it look like I had jumped into the middle of a star. Immediately my ship started overheating. I turned to gtfo of there and saw I was between 2 very close A class binary stars. That was my first pucker moment of the trip, and it came so close to the end. In the end I made it to Jaques without incident and sold my 44 pages of data. Including the page I sold at the core (which would make page 45) I went from 720mil to 2.6bil. I decided I wanted to jump back in my Asp, and immediately fell back in love. My son wanted to try it and I promised he could after I sold all my data, so I bought him an Eagle and let him fly around a bit. He really enjoyed it. After that I went to Colonia Hub and bought an Anaconda and instantly blew. The second I launched I was a dead stick. I had been playing around with the internals trying to make a Jumpaconda and must have put in a tiny powerplant. After the rebuy I flew back to Jaques and jumped back in my asp. I just wasnt a fan of how big the Anaconda was and how restrictive its canopy is. I went in and kitted it out and was able to get about 20 more ly per jump out of it. Its now just shy of 60. My plan is to go pick up that ELW I left yesterday, and then come back. Its about 100 jumps round trip, but would have been about 160 in my Python. After that I may fart around with the engineers since I have invites to all of them in the area now, or I may finally head out to Beagle. We shall see. I ordered a splitter cable today that will allow me to play tethered and charge the headset from the wall at the same time.

When the day began I wasn't planning on making a push all the way to Colonia, but as the day wore on I saw that I could probably make it. I decided I was going to make the push, but my headset was all but dead with about 30 jumps left. At one point today I decided to try and find some Neutron Stars, which I did find a couple. Then I checked a couple of novae but they had both been previously explored. I believe those were the only previously explored systems, other than maybe a Neutron Star or 2 between Sag A and just shy of Colonia. For the first 3/4 of the day I found no ELWs, and then all at once I found 3 within about a 2 hour span. After ending the session however, I saw that at the second ELW I had apparently failed to complete the mapping. While I was at that one I had fired my probes and then went off to map the moon and then land on it to take some photos of the ELW and Novae which was only a jump away. I should get to Colonia pretty quickly tomorrow. I may buy an Anaconda and fly it back to that ELW and then double back. I don't think I could do all that in one day though. I'm excited to get there and sell. I wish they sold faction ships out here. I'd like to buy a Clipper as well.

I kind of wish I had kept up better with this. I'll catch you up. After my last entry I flew to Colonia, farted around a bit, and then quit for 22 months. During that trip to Colonia I believe I only found 3 unique ELWs. When I came back in in Feb of 2020 I decided to swing up through the galactic core, and then double back to Colonia. Rather than head out to Beagle Point, I decided to get a Suicide Sidewinder and head back to the bubble, leaving my Asp behind. While back in the bubble I worked on engineering a bit, farmed some rep, bought some new ships, and mined quite a bit. During that time in 2020 I found 15 ELWs. I took a break again until 19 Dec 22. When I came back this time I couldn't remember where I was, what I was doing, how to play, which addons to use, how to use any of the addons, etc. Everything was out of date and unbound. It took a couple days to get it all set up. I decided to take my Python and convert it from a mining rig to an exploration rig with the intent of swing east this time up through the core and back to Colonia. After a rough start again having forgotten what I was doing and realizing I was missing stuff I set off for real. That was nearly a month ago now. In this chunk of play time I've found 20 ELWs. I've been watching the Best of the Worst series. About half way through I remembered that I could open a second instance of OVRdrop, so I now have estimated values on my dashboard too. I'm scanning everything worth more than 1mil credits now. I also remember recently that I had previously been grinding for rep. I'm only 3 levels from my Corvette. Today I made it to the core. I stopped at a fleet carrier and sold a page of data to UC, but then saw they took a 25% cut so I just repaired and took off towards Colonia. I'm about 200 jumps from Colonia as we speak. I'm not sure what I'll do when I get there. I want to buy an Anaconda, but I also want to jump back in my Asp. I want to go farm rep for my Corvette back in the bubble, but I also want to go to Beagle Point. Guess I'll see when I get there either tomorrow night or Friday. In a future log I want to make sure to document my setup so I can easily pick it back up in the future if I need a break.

I'm ROUGHLY 1/3 of the way to Colonia at Thaikoa LW-C d18, based on the direction I plan on traveling, with 15,885.9LY to go. I'd obviously be much farther if I didnt waste two full days on a false start. I've still only found one new Earth-Like World, so I've decided to tighten my star filters even more. I've only seen someone else's name on 1 in about the last 150 systems, and that was a neutron star. I'm now 62,082LY from BP and a whopping 12,316.88 from Sol.

During a string of... who knows how many systems, but probably at least 60, without seeing another Commander's name having previously discovered the system, I happened upon a Neutron Star. I was pretty excited expecting it to also have been undiscovered, but of course it was already claimed. I have read that Neutron Star farming is a thing, which makes sense. I don't specifically look for these types of things on the map while traveling, but it was pretty cool to happen upon it. They make me nervous. I am 17,106.38LY from Colonia at Blau Thaa OO-Z d13-43, which is actually a little farther away than I left off yesterday, but I'm exploring! I've found so much, but have still only uncovered 1 ELW. It hasn't become a grind yet. I've started listening to Startalk podcasts during the flights which makes the time fly by.

Morale is high! Today I started off in old, familiar Flyeia Dryiae SM-D B45-0. From there I plotted a course towards the Crescent Nebula. A little ways into the trip I stumbled onto my very first previously undiscovered Earth-Like World. It's name was REDACTED. It was a good feeling to have come this far and finally find one. I made my way to the nebula and then move downward and clockwise around the galaxy again. I'm currently on a stretch of 38 systems in a row that had been previously unclaimed. It's a ghost town out here. I made it out to Blaa Eohn IC-B d1-2 and will be continuing off this way for a while before heading off to Colonia. I'm currently 6022.1LY from Sol, 16,617.8LY from Colonia, and 63,857 from BP. I'm finally knocking off some distance, albeit not a lot.

I started the day in Outorst RJ-M B48-0 heading off in the direction of NGC 7822 Nebula. Once there, I found another inhabited system, NGC 7822 Sector BQ-Y d12, which contained the Gorgon Research Facility. I stopped off to sell data again and make minor repairs. I made roughly $5.5Mil. After topping off I decided to run down to the planet surface for some photo ops, but I'm not great with the camera yet. I was a little disappointed to not find any black holes as I had heard there were some nearby, but didn't want to get coords from the internet. Getting back on the road I decided to head back for the farthest point away from Sol I had previously been; Flyeia Dryiae SM-D B45-0. I chose to take a line that was very low on the map. After struggling for a while to find systems not previously discovered, I came to the conclusion that I was too far down. The scarcity of the stars makes it so that if someone had passed through before, they almost certainly would have been to those systems already. I decided to go straight up 3 jumps and from then on I was swimming in new systems. The new scanner is great, but I'm sad to see everything that I'm now willingly passing up. Many systems have all ice or rock planets, sometimes in distant binary systems may LS apart. There just isn't time to get everything. After committing to the goal of getting back to my turn around point I ended up staying up a bit later than anticipated, but here I am. I'm feeling good and looking forward to covering new ground again. I haven't yet decided where to go from here on my way to Colonia, but that's first on the agenda for tomorrow. For now I started listening to classic rock while flying and it makes the whole thing even more enjoyable.