I celebrated the passing of 3305 with my family and we had a great time.

I picked them up early and we all flew to Bluford Orbital where I'd booked a table at the best restaurant on the station. The meal was fantastic.

Then I packed my mum and Olivia off to see a show while my dad, Nero and I searched out a good bar for a few drinks. We ended up at The Commanders Rest in the hub part of the station - we partied until nearly midnight. Nero staggered off to collect the ladies at 11:30 and we celebrated the coming of 3306 together with the rest of the commanders at the bar. Couldn't have been better, spending that time with a joyful crowd of like minded revellers.

None of us were fit to fly back to Trevithick Dock so we hired a suite for the night in a right swanky hotel.

It is now 10:30 on the first day of 3306 and I'm looking forward to my next expedition. First thing to do is to sell the Type 6 that I bought yesterday. Then get Are We Going Now? provisioned and serviced for my next trip. I'll be spending about a month searching the Formadine Rift to see what I can glean.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

I'm going to take a trip back to LHS 3447 and visit my folks at Trevithick Dock for the final day of 3305. I'll go in "Are We Going Now?" my DBX which is set up for exploration, it's just 2 jumps in her from my adopted base/home in the Sol system. Once the festivities are over my plan is to head out into the black again, to boldly go where I've not been before.

It's strange, I've not been back since I got my pilots licence (exactly a year ago today) and left LHS 3447 in the Sidewinder that the Pilot's Federation loaned me. But I'm a different man now, it'll be good to see my folks, mum, dad and my brother Nero and Olivia my little sister, I wonder if she's decided to stay on at school and do some more learning.

But I'm not going to be idle while I'm here, there's still a few hours until the year end so I'm going to put a small trading ship together and do some missions before I stop to celebrate.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

If you've been reading these logs (and if you have I thank you for taking an interest) then you'll know that my ships all have strange, sometimes unpronounceable names.

I've been using a language translation app that I found on Galnet to translate ship function specific phrases from English to Klingon (they were a fictional warrior race conceived in the 20th and 21st centuries - over a thousand years ago, you can still see the modern Holovids of the original series which I believe was called "Star Trek" ). My problem is that even I can't remember what the names mean any more.

Well recently I've been reading some ancient science fiction as well and found some great books by a bloke called Iain M. Banks. He wrote about a galaxy wide civilisation called The Culture and the ships had really cool names.

So I've decided to have a ship re-naming and re-identing orgy along the lines of the ships in The Culture. This is going to be fun.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely Commanders.

Now I'm making an effort to collect as many Guardian Blueprints as possible. Then my module choice will be nicely extended. The Guardian modules reduce the need for engineering human modules to get the best out of them. A maximally engineered human module is always better than a Guardian module of the same class though, but the effort required to get the engineering materials goes away.

So I made several more visits to Synuefe LQ-T B50-1 B2 and Synuefe GV-T B50-4 and completed the set of Module Blueprint Segments and added another three Weapon Blueprint Segments to my collection.

My next ship project is to put a Xeno killing Cobra MkIII together and see how that handles against the insectivorous beasts.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

My material collecting Cobra works very well by the way (see my last log).

Recently I decided that I'd have a go at kicking the ass of some Thargoids. A bit of research indicated that it would be best to outfit a ship with Guardian weapons and plenty of hull reinforcement. I could do that but the weapons would need me to raid some Guardian Structures to get the weapon blueprint segments.

I'd already plundered the Guardian Structure on Synuefe LQ-T B50-1 B2 for module blueprint segments (3 altogether which I used for FSD Booster, Shield Reinforcement and Power Plant) and decided on Synuefe GV-T B50-4 B1 for the weapon variety. So I headed off in P'Taq over to ex-Guardian space to do some raiding.

Well I duly obtained 2 weapon blueprint segments and headed back to Shinrarta Dezhra to buy and outfit the new ship. I used the build for an Alliance Chieftain on the Canonn Research Group Galnet site as the basis, but included a fuel scoop and FSD booster so that I'd be able to get over to where I was going to find Thargoids easily.

I used the weapon blueprint segments to unlock Class 1 and Class 2 Gauss Cannons and fitted these along with a Remote Release Flak Launcher and a Class 1 Beam Laser. The optional module slots mainly got filled with Hull reinforcements.

I did a successful combat trial at Shinrarta Dezhra and then headed over to the Pleiades area to find some Thargoids. They proved to be tricky beasts to tackle, but I killed 50 scouts in fairly quick order, but had to pay several visits to the local station to get rid of the caustic stuff. One of these I nearly didn't make after my canopy got blown out. While I was there I exchanged the fuel scoop and FSD booster for additional hull and module reinforcement. The ship now has 578MJ Shields and 3,656 integrity, so it held up to most of the attacks fairly well.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly dangerous commanders.

A log or two ago, I recounted that I was working on obtaining my imperial Duke rank with the intention of purchasing an Imperial Cutter and outfitting it as a general purpose ship and while I was in Imperial Space I also bought a Viper MkIV to replace the MkIII.

Well the new Viper proved to be more robust than the old one, so I sold that. So my combat Viper is now effectively upgraded and does a super job for me as a small fighter.

And when I got back to Shinrarta Dezhra I did buy an Imperial Cutter as is befitting of my new rank. My impressions of this are mixed. It is a beautiful and luxurious vessel, the firepower and resilience are superb, but it handles like a flying brick! but not quite as bad as my Type 9 Heavy.

And more...

I've been reviewing the engineering mods made on the fleet and getting all of my ships as fully engineered as I can, which involves collecting a lot of engineering materials and data. My sources for this are, and I guess the same as everyone else's, mission reward, collecting from USS sites and from combat aftermath and I recently realised that a collector limpet is very good for doing the collecting from the USS and combat aftermath.

So I upgraded my Type 6 with one. But it is not suitable for combat. I toyed with my other combat ships. The Viper had no cargo racks, so it couldn't carry limpets. The Alliance Chieftan was OK, but I had to use the slot I had allocated for the Auto Docking computer. I then considered upgrading that to a Challenger, which would have worked and would have been slightly more robust. In the end I settled for buying a Cobra MkIII and fitted it out to do this job. I haven't tried it in the role yet, but it did remind me of my earlier Cobra, my second ship when I upgraded from the Sidewinder. But experience, having the engineers available and ability to know how to put a ship together to a specific role really worked for this. I expect that it will do the job admirably, we'll see...

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

I have left Imperial space and returned to the Galileo orbiter in the Sol system as I managed to achieve the Imperial Navy rank of Duke.

My stay at Oort Port in CD-40 395 was a pleasant one and it was made quite profitable once I'd allied with all of the imperial factions based there and I've managed to get well known at a lot of the local systems around. They're not a bad bunch really.

While I was there I bought a Viper MkIV, which is currently under transit to Galileo. My intention is to strip my Viper MkIII of the modules that will fit and see if the MkIV gives me a more robust vessel, If it does I'll sell the MkIII.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

I've been spending some time doing missions in Imperial space in order to get my Imperial Navy Rank increased. I'm hatching plans to put an Imperial Cutter together as a large multi-purpose vessel and I need to get to Duke to even buy the ship.

I started out at Count and about 50% of the way to Earl. I reached Earl at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon and I'm currently sitting about 80% of the way to Marquis. Duke is one rank above that.

I've based myself at CD-40 395 and gotten allied with most of the imperial factions there, so the missions are coming nice and regular and also with good rewards. Obviously increasing my wealth is a pleasant side-effect of this particular activity.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

This is the route that I took from Flyooe Dryeia WH-H d11-0, which eventually brought me to -2201 ly.

Normal jump to Flyooe Dryeia CY-G d11-0

Premium Boost jump to HD 7136 (201:-1705:-17, 93.6 ly)

Normal jump to Flyooe Dryeia JZ-E d12-1 (229:-1761:-20, 65.4 ly)

Normal jump to Flyooe Dryeia JZ-e d12-0 where I found solid mineral spheres at an NSP.

Normal jump to Flyooe Dryeia MU-E d12-0 (321:-1818:9)

Premium boost jump to Flyooe Dryeia OR-E d12-0 (317:-1930:-24, 113 ly)

Normal jump to Flyooe Dryeia QK-E d12-0 (274:-1954:-14)

Premium boost jump to Flyooe Dryeia VL-C d13-0 (228:-2044:69, 131 ly)

Normal jump to HD 5568 (236:-2118:79)

Premium boost jump to HIP 4098 (255:-2201:131, 100 ly)

And I could get no further below from here, so I spent the night on moon A7A.

Next morning I did some material prospecting and took a view of the water world that the moon was orbiting.

From here I headed back home, but it took a few premium boost jumps to do it.

A worthwhile excursion I think.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.

Before I decide which ship to use for the trip to the Formidine Rift I've decided to take tu' je batlhlIj, my Diamondback Explorer on an extended trip. Having completed it's flight trials this is really the last thing to do to get really used to using her.

She has 68ly jumps, a 4 tonne cargo hold and a class 4 fuel scoop. Fuel scooping is the thing that I need to get right here, as it takes longer to "fill up" than it does on P'Taq.

So I navigated to Flyooe Dryeia WH-H d11-0, about as far below the galactic plane at the position of Sol as the galaxy map would allow me. 29 jumps, about 1480ly below the plane.

This allowed me to sort out the fuel scooping - slow down when I hit the system, take a bit longer at the scooping and then accelerate for the next jump.

Once I arrived at Flyooe Dryeia WH-H d11-0 I started plotting jumps to stars further below.

I'm currently camped out on moon A6A at Flyooe Dryeia EJ-F d12-0, an interesting system where I found some notable stellar phenomena,

I also took a shot of the galaxy above me, you can start to see the curve of its edge from here.

I'll be plotting more systems "below" now, one at a time to see how low I can get. Ultimately I'll probably have to use FSD boost to do some of it, as I don't see many stars below me.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.