Last log I mentioned that I'd received invites from Didi Vaterman and Bill Turner. I reviewed their services and decided that Bill could be useful for Lightweight Life Support and save a trip to Los to get to Etienne Dorn, so I paid him a visit in the Alioth system at Turner's Metallics.

He's a nice guy and wanted 50 tonnes of Bromellite for his services. Research into that substance came up with Bromellite hotspots and surprisingly enough also a rumour that Void Opal hotspots were better. Whatever, I needed pristine icy rings to obtain either sort of hotspot. I'd grown fond of the icy rings around LHS 2509 planet 5 for obtaining mined resources so that is where I headed (only 3 jumps from Alioth).

As per the rumour I tried the Void Opal hotspot first without much success, I managed 9 tonnes but had to surrender 4 to a persistent pirate shortly after.

After a night laid up above the rings I then tried the Bromellite hotspot next door and managed to get 57 tonnes of Bromellite and 5 tonnes of Low Temperature Diamonds. The trip back to Turner's Metallics was uneventful and I managed to open up Bill and did the Lightweight Life Support to grade 3. Once again I ran out of materials so I did a quick trip to the material trader at McAllister Terminal in NLTT 34715 to do some appropriate changes before I headed back to finish off the job with Bill. I took the blueprint for the mod with me as well.

Next stop, back to Sol to apply it to my exploration vessels.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

Well, I continued with the mining efforts and eventually I received the invite message from her while I was mining metallic ores at Delkar (nearest pristine metallic rings to Shinrarta Dezhra).

My previous research had indicated that she would need 10 tonnes of Painite before she would start modifications for me. I'd read lots of messages suggesting that this mineral is really difficult to find - and so it proved to be. It didn't matter where I went I couldn't find it with my current mining vessel because It was not fitted with a Detailed Surface Scanner, so I was groping in the dark prospecting every likely looking asteroid I could find without any luck.

I decided on another way to solve this one and recamped to Sol, where I stored all the mining apparatus off of tlhIlwI' loSmaH Hut, then made the necessary space for it on my general purpose Python (Heimdall). This ship was already fitted with a Detailed Surface Scanner so I was hoping that scanning rings would find me a Painite hotspot.

First stop I headed back to Delkar with the Python and scanned the rings around planet 7. Well that found me a Painite hotspot alright, so I headed in there and prospected for Painite - it wasn't too long until I found a nice asteroid with a Painite core which I mined 17 tonnes from. A short time later I was chased out by pirates looking to rob me of my prize, but I managed to outrun them in the Python and took a trip to Prospector's Rest in the Kuk system to pay my respects to Selene.

She modded my Python up to Lightweight Armour grade 3 (which is what I'd been after) then I ran out of the materials needed for the grade 4 and 5 mods. That also gained me invites from Didi Vaterman and Bill Turner.

I returned to Sol, restored the Python and Asp Explorer to their normal loadout and took the Diamondback Explorer back to Kuk, via a material trader to get it modified too. I have a couple of rolls to do to complete grade 5 there now.

Well worth all the mining work and it was also an interesting distraction and very profitable to boot. Now that I have the deep core mining cracked i'll be happy to do that again, I think that I can easily make 50 mil or more CR in an hour with the Asp, so looking forward to doing it again.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

This activity is one that I've not had much success with in the past.

So I've revisited my mining training notes and studied some additional material on Galnet and headed off into the black in my Asp Explorer (tlhIlwI' loSmaH Hut) to try again.

Before I went I did a few upgrades on the ship to get the FSD range up and the engines maxed out with dirty drive tuning, these adjustments might help give me an edge.

So I took her to Puppis Sector OI-T b3-6 as a system with pristine icy rings close to Shinrarta Dezhra for some practice which went well, mainly used the mining laser and the abrasion blaster, but managed to mine a respectable load which I sold at Mbutsi. I followed up with a visit to Puppis Sector TO-R B4-4 for some more practice and then onto LHS 2509 where I started to get serious.

I did my first ever deep core mining and bagged a hold half full of Low Temperature Diamonds and Void Opals which I sold off at Amalangkan.

So now I was getting hooked, success brings confidence. More research on a better mining set-up with a different ship yielded nothing really, but the way that tlhIlwI' loSmaH Hut's hard points were set up was not correct. I headed back to Shinrarta Dezhra for some outfitting adjustments and corrections to the way I was using the mining tools.

Next stop was Delkar for some metallic ring mining and came up trumps. 10 tonnes of Serendibite and 10 tonnes of Monazite later and I was very happy.

The time spent tuning the vessel was well spent and I now own a smashing little mining ship that suits my style very well. Now maybe I can get Selene Jean unlocked.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

The third trial was scheduled as a FSD supercharge at a neutron star, followed by a jump of 200 ly, nice badge to collect as well.

My chosen neutron star was HP 57814 B. The Primary star is an F class and the neutron is just over 17000 ls out.

It took me 4 jumps to get to the system, which I scanned when I got there. With some trepidation I set off for the neutron star and slowed down and stopped a few ls away. The neutron cones were nicely lined up vertical from where I sat, so I pointed towards the one above the star and started my approach.

Everything went to plan, as I entered the cone there was a good deal of turbulence and then I heard the message "FSD Supercharged"! Wow! I'd done it without any adverse effect on the ship. So I remained in the cone for a short while longer and then exited. The plan was to get back to Sol (nearly 233ly) in one jump, so I checked on the obtained jump distance and it said 271.88ly, more than enough!

Set course for Sol, checked the tick box in the Jump Data, confirmed that it was one jump and went for it.

A few seconds later I was back home selling the astrometric data to Universal Cartographics for 222,679 CR. Not only did I have a good trial I got paid for it too.

Flight trials have been a great success and tu' je batlhlIj is now a fully fledged exploration vessel. I'm looking forward to my first extended journey in her, but that needs to be planned properly first.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

Not satisfied with the first two high g worlds at 3.5g and 4.12g, my second trial ups the difficulty somewhat with Achenar 3 at 6.72g and Wasp-77 A 1 at 7.94g.

Having made a hard landing at HR 1185 A4 I took these really seriously with shallow approaches and not thrusting down until I was very low above the ground.

At both I picked a suitable geological site and settled down nicely. It went very well at Achenar 3, and I went out in the Scarab to collect some materials. On these high g worlds it can be very difficult to get up some of the steeper slopes.

It didn't go exactly to plan at Wasp-77 A 1 though. I bounced on touchdown and turned turtle. Upside down! How the **** do I recover from this? Well a few minutes use of different thrusters and I managed to right the ship ok. This world is very close to it's star, so I got a stunning view of tu' je batlhlij silhouetted by it after I returned from prospecting.

Now to go back to Sol to get set up for the third and final flight trial for this little beauty. I think that I'm going to love this ship as much as my Krait Phantom.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

So I set off in the Diamondback Explorer (which I renamed tu' je batlhlIj) on the first flight trials. The first task was visiting Marco Qwent to get the Stripped Down experimental effect for the power distributer followed by a visit to Liz Ryder to get Lightweight Armour for the bulkheads. I'd made a small change to the outfitting earlier and these two changes helped to get the jump range back up a bit, it now sits at 67.85ly.

From Demolition Unlimited I headed off to Aku planet 1 (Kitsu's Rest) to do the first high G world landing trial, my previous experiences with these proved disastrous on my very first foray to Sag A*, where I crashed twice on two attempts. This time I took it very gently and made a successful landing - but on the dark side of the planet, landing at a geological site. This was a 3.5 G landing.

To up the ante, my next destination was HR 1185 planet A4 at 4.12 G. During this flight I achieved a 67.84ly jump.

One of the 7 jumps to HR 1158 must have taken me through a system with Thargoids and the ship was forced out of hyperdrive - I thought I was a goner, but after accidentally colliding with the Thargoid I made my escape. Scary moment!

HR 1185 A4 is beautifully ringed, again I took a gently, gently approach, headed for a geological site, but landed a few hundred Km short of it. It was a hard landing and the hull took a 58% damage hit.

The view from the landing site was awesome though,

I ended up doing some module repairs (Thrusters, Frame Shift Drive and Power Distributer) which I think must have been caused by the Thargoid encounter, then took off to The Indra (local megaship) for hull repairs.

More high G world landings scheduled for the second flight trial.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

Missions collecting materials, upgrade systems at an engineer - repeat, repeat, repeat…

I've been doing that for a few days, getting some of my new ships ready for use.

In particular the Diamondback Explorer, which I now have up to 67.92 ly jump range and I'll be taking out soon for some flight trials. I can already get to Shinrarta Dezhra from Sol in a single jump. So I'm planning a neutron jump and some high G world landings.

For the neutron jump I think that HIP 57814 is a suitable candidate 234ly from Sol, it will only take me 4 jumps to get there and I should get back to Sol in 1 jump assuming that she survives the experience.

I have a list of 4 suitable high-G worlds from 3.5G to 7.94G within easily reachable range.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

I have published my galaxy circumnavigation route here

Kris Afron's Hexagonal Circumnavigation

It was a lot of fun and i'm planning a few other excursions for the future.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

With my newfound credits I shot over to Shinrarta Dezhra and had an orgy of ship buying. So my fleet now has over 20 types and I gained a couple of badges.

Since then I've concentrated on getting the most out of the Diamondback Explorer with outfitting and engineers modifications. I still have a bit of work to do with it, but I need the right manufactured and encoded materials to complete it - and a few runs to engineers to obtain the experimental effects. My aim with this ship is to get the maximum jump distance that I can, which is about 68 ly according to ED Astrometrics.

Then i'll start the same exercise on the other new ships.

But right now i'm running missions to get material and encoded rewards. The credits are a bonus, but the main thing is the materials now.

CMDR Kris Afron signing off.

I arrived at Sol 11:36 ship time.

The paint job took a battering,

But I soon got that dealt with and all necessary repairs done too.

Then I downloaded the Universal Cartographic data, which took 40 minutes! Well it brought me a tidy profit, nearly 1,300,000,000 CR after I'd paid for the repairs and re-spray.

It is good to be back home. Time for a beer!

CMDR Kris Afron signing off