I recently joined Twitch streamer Brother Sabathius on a mini expedition 'southwards' towards several of the nebula the other side of the Col 70 permit locked systems.

Getting there was a little 'fun' due to the limited navigation options thanks to all those permit locks, but I did slip through the cracks and make my way to the Butterfly, Thor's Helmet, Seagull, Rosette, Jellyfish and Crab Nebulae.

It was also a test of deep space tritium mining and ho-boy, I think it'd be nice if there was engineering options for mining, stuff like the prospector limpet being able to slow the 'spin' of an asteroid so that the faster turning rocks don't slap your limpets to death, and an upgrade to the mining laser that either reduces the chance of materials dropping (To maximise mineral yield when mining for sellable stuff) or to increase the chance of rarer mined materials dropping instead. All that said, you can get some pretty nice views while mining:

While the actual mini-expedition then headed back towards the bubble, I decided that I'd take my relatively new fleet carrier further onwards with me to the border line between The Formidine Rift & Keplers Crest. Found undiscovered Earthlike planets in both regions and now it's time to head back.

Just in time too, I'm starting to see faces in space...

Wilsooooooooooooon!

Initially I was going to do this expedition in a Beluga Whale because why not, but I also intended to do a whole bunch of plant scanning during this journey as well and a large ship isn't super accomodating for that.

So in the two days before the event was due to officially start I spent a whole bunch of time buying, outfitting and engineering a Viper Mk IV and I'm pretty happy with the result. Though I do think I'm going to swap the size 3 shield & size 4 frame shift drive booster around so I have a little more damage tankiness - largely because I had a close call with a cliff that didn't load in properly until I was careening right into it.

My goal now will be to route through the bubble on the way from waypoint 2 Blu Thua WI-B d15 (Nimbostratus) to waypoint 3 NGC 4463 Sector RY-R e4-5 (Autumn Nebula) to do a small bit of refitting and possibly see if I can engineer the armour to be more tanky (I think I only engineered up to rank 3)... before rejoining the expedition proper.

One downside - the participants list of the expedition still thinks I'm flying the beluga, which I initially arrived in but is now parked back at homebase. Ah well, it's just a detail.

Also, footage of the fleet I departed with can be found here, if you look carefully you'll see my purple engine trail on the right. :)

https://www.twitch.tv/brother_sabathius/clip/IronicExuberantJamDeIlluminati-fS35i6P5QAAA5-9W

So I finally decided to get my gameplay data into EDSM. Setup EDD, then I realised "Hang on..." said I, "I've got a whole bunch of journals from before the reinstall that I hadn't moved into the save folder".

Initially I dragged multiple years of journal files onto the website uploading thingy and let it do its thing, slept on it, then did a silly and browsed to a different page while it was working through the files.

THIS time, I'm going to upload it a year at a time so a misclick won't ruin the process and make my travel map look all sorts of weird.

In the meantime, joining the Apollo 15 expedition, all parked up near the start system and gotten my access to the Fleetcomm group today. Though I was on the Distant Worlds 2 expedition I was a late joiner to the expedition so I ended up doing that one through the Mobius PVE Eurasia private group instead.

Right, let's take another look at the import journal tab and THIS time try not to interrupt the process.