Solo'd First Radar Site

Logged on last night to the lovely message that my system need to be loaded (indication no one had visited my wormhole yet since DT). Lost a grav site to despawn and had just the two unknowns of my static wormholes, so no work to do closing holes.

I started to finish off the last of the ABC roids from the Grav site I had worked the previous night when I got rudely interuppted by the crash.

Watch a little Jim Gaffigan and came back to see all was in order and back up and running in the Eve Universe.

Finished off the little bit remaining for the mining and decided to try and tackle the one Radar site. Setup t6he Abby for duel Large Armor Rep's, and twin Adaptive II's, had to scale back to only 5 guns to make the fit work, but definetly wanted to go defense over offense. Will need to add less demanding guns to shopping list for next trip to high sec.

Set up the Harbinger to throw drones and kill close in frigs and web cruisers.

Well not ideal setups but off I went. Really was surprised how easy the site started. First wave was all cruisers and the 1 BS in second wave never really got that hard. Fun started on the last wave with the dual BS spawn. Immediatly had to warp the Harbinger out as there was no way it was going to be able to tank dual Sleeper BS's. Got about 1/2 way through the first BS's armor and had to warp out the abby. I need to either be able tp throw drones farther or do more damage to get through a dual BS spawn without warping out.

On the second trip in, I just barely killed the first BS with about 8% armor left. With the dual repping I was easily able to tank the second BS alone. Finished the kills and got my hacking equipment.

Was quite surprised to find 2 of the 8 cans empty. Assume this is "normal" as I would expect the site to despawn if anyone had just warped in and tried to steal stuff quickly from the cans earlier.

Total net was about 20-25 datacores, and 12 chips. Estimated the haul at around 60-70 million, plus the 2 nanoribbons in the salvage. Total time was just under an hour, including the hacking and salvaging. Figure i can cut that time down with better setups.

Going to try the Mag site tonight if it is still there.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Settling In

Well seems I got my Holiday present from CCP, and I don't mean the new ship. I finally got not one but two High Sec openings into the system.

First was a small R943 in High Sec area of Black Rise. It had already had its mass reduced but not critically, so I jumped the Orca in with the small POS setup, closing the hole behind me (which was also just fine by me). Moved to moon of choice and offlined to wait for playing time to set up the POS.

After getting the initial POS and Corp hanger setup, I explored the static 2 and found another High Sec opening in the Amarr region, only 13 jumps from my High Sec base of operation. Well two Orca trips later I had 90% of my gear in the w-space and 2 weeks of fuel.

With the POS finally setup, I spent the first night running the anomalies down to just 1, in an effort to dissuade visitors from hanging out in my system. Been using a beam abby setup with a pulse Harbinger to handle the frigates and work as a webber on the cruisers so the abby can hit them easier. Seems to be working well, though still takes awhile to clear the sites.

Last night had a little RL extra time and got to play an extended 5 hour stretch. Took this time to mine 10k Ark roid, 15k Bistot, and most of a 20k Crokite roid. Nice haul when i get another opening to high sec to refine it.

Overall now getting settled in and avoiding landing on the grids of my two statics to keep the systems as closed as possible.

When I can get a chance to get the gear for my Pulse Abby, I will try a Radar or Mag site.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Last night

Orca is out, but still no way in.

With the Orca stuck on the wrong side of the collapse in Black Rise low sec, I decided that the best route to getting it "free" would be to scan down an entrance into w-space and move through w-space to a high sec opening, or change ships in mid stream and settle any decent Class 2 or 3 systems I could find.

First system was void of any signatures, but the second found an unstable Wormhole. Warped to 100km only to find several sentries around a K162 wormhole. Opened channel of communications and explained my situation and asked if they had a route back to High Sec. While they offered me "safe passage" they did not have a route to High Sec. Onwards to the next hole.

Three systems later found another K162, no sentry, but popped my head in to find a very active systems with numerous POS and ships on scan.

Couple more systems and Bingo, found a B449 wormhole, direct to high sec, and of course it was on verge of collapse so I had no more then a few hours to jump the Orca 4 jumps through the backwaters of Black Rise.

Using the magnate as a scout and waiting for systems to be empty I started my trex. First jump was easy between two systems where I was the only person in either. Second jump was to a system that had 1 guy in a station. During this jump I got a little excitement when some jumoped into the destination system, and 30 seconds later appeared at the gate. Orca was already in route. As the Orca came out of warp his Drake jumped through. We jumped together and if he saw me he did not care to turn around as I aligned and cloaked on the other side and he never jumped back through.

The real fun came on the next jump. Again waited till both systems were clear and started the Orca from the planet I was cloaked around towards the gate. As I approached three people popped into local. I jumped the Orca through, alligned to a planet and cloaked. Before I could fully alighn (man Orca's are slow), the three popped through the gate. Fortunetly none were close enough to uncloak me. As they flew off I breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon. Not 10 seconds later local exploded. I quickly lost count of the number of ships that were popping up all around me. There had to be atleast 30-40 ships coming through the gate. I can only assume they were chasing the first 3, but who knows. All I know is the closest any came to me was just over 5,000m. Way too close for comfort.

Once my heart stopped pounding and the gate was quiet for 30 seconds, I uncloaked and headed for a planet.

Fortunetly the last jump was uneventful, and while there was a scanning frigate at the Wormhole I paid it no mind as I jumped the Orca to High Sec and landed deep in Gallente space.

On the other front, two more D382's have passed without an opening to High Sec. The first was a system identical to mine with an A239 and D382 exits. The next D382 in that chain was very full and active. Last night found a very worked Class 2 system with only 3 sigs. Its two Wormholes and the one I created. As I saw no activity directional scan I warped to 0 at the first Wormhole and was greated by a manticore and a bomb for my efforts. While I could have jumped through, I did not have a backup scanner in the Wormhole, so i turned around and headed back to my K162 hole. I hailed in Local that I was looking for a way out. No response. I warped back to the B274 wormhole at 100km and saw the manticore before it cloaked. Fortunetly I was able to click the pilot info before it cloaked and found that 1) the wormhole was over 45 jumps from the Orca, and 2) they had it on the verge of collapse and were bringing in their own Orca to refuel their Class 4 POS. The other WH was a Class 1 hole that would not fit the Orca. Another night, no way to get the Orca in.

Here is hoping the next few nights brings some success.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Good News - Bad News

Well I decided this weekend that I was tired of looking for a High Sec opening to the Wormhole and that it was time to jump my small POS "forward post" into the hole so that I would at least have some base of operation larger then the Orca and could start to mine and run the anomolies without having to worry so much about visitors and safe spots.

The hole wqas 3 jumps off High Sec in the Black Rise area and I started to transfer up the small Caldari POS and ECM for the forward post i planned to set up till we could get a decent high sec opening for the Orca's and the large Amarr POS for the corp.

Well as is always the case, or so it seems, the route got hot right when we were ready to jump off high sec with the first of two trips we needed to run to the hole. The route had been quiet all night, but once we were ready we got a Pirate in a Drake bouncing around, as well as two small blobs who appeared to be looking for each other. In the end, we had a few brushes at "clear gates", with people warping in at the same time as us, but we got the two trips to and from the hole done and I now had my small POS setup in my Orca.

That's the good news.

Bad news is I learned the hard way that mass allocations most definetly are variable.

I have closed several holes so far and thought I had it down pretty well. Stranded a Abby once, but all the other times was fine with the Orca and Abby closing our wormholes. Seemed pretty easy, warp Orca through till it registers the first change in mass status. If the Orca is on the "wrong" side when this happens, then warp "in" and "out" one more time and start using the Abby. Note: all the holes I have closed so far are 2B lifetime holes (A239, B274, D382)

So I start to close the A239. Sure enough a few trips with the orca and the hole flipped to the "mass effected but not critical" message and Orca was on Low Sec side. Orca back and out again, and started jumping the abby. Got the "mass critical" with all three ships outside (including my magnate prober), same as every other time. Jumped the Abby back in and "bye bye hole". So there I sat with Orca and POS on the wrong side. First time ever that the Abby has closed a hole that had not shown critical in 2 jumps.

Well so here i sit now with an Orca and Magnate in Low Sec of Black Rise, and my abby (and offlined scanning alts) inside. Well I logged the Orca off and logged on a scanning toon on that account, and scanned the new A239 down. Found it 29 jumps from the low sec it was at (the farthest from my base yet). So I jumped the 29 jumps to get the magnate back into the hole (again since all the BM's for the system were in the Orca).

So the bottom line is what to do now.

First I know I need a smaller ship to make the last few jumps to bring the hole critical. The Abby is just over 5% of the WH mass and means I could get into this situation again if the mass is just over the 10% threshold of showing "Critical".

Second, I am at least thankful my POS is with the Orca. I have the ability now to jump systems in mid stream if I can get another entrance to W-space from a place near my Orca. I am not at all excited to try to runthe orca back to high sec, as it is not setup with either ecm or warp stabilizers and would be a sitting duck with its long align time.

So tonight I will reconnect the Magnate and Orca in hopes of finding a way back into w-space and either a new home, or back to high sec.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Waiting for POS opening

Well now we are waiting for an opening to bring in the POS. So far all the exits have been 19+ jumps from our POS hanger. Worst case is on Sunday we will start mass closing holes to find a suitable way in for the Orca's and POS.

In the mean time been running anomolies in both the home system and neighboring class 2 w-space. So far nothing near the haul of melted nanoribbons from he first night. Have had a couple of sessions cut short by a visiting Vagabond that did not want to leave us alone to our fun.

Still trying to get back to a station also to get mu CCP gift.

More to come as we work to establish our second w-space base.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Home Sweet Home

Well the A239 Wormhole is static, so we have found our new home.

Spent last night gathering the needed supplies and equipment for our new Amarr Control Tower. We are going with the Amarr for the shear power level it has to run either the Intensive Refining Array or the Reactor for hybrid components.

We are still short a few fuel pieces, but have most of what we need for the first month.

As for setup we went with a mix of ecm and lasers for defense.

At this point we are waiting to see if we get a good High Sec exit through our neighboring Class 2. If not in the next few days, we may attempt a Low Sec move if the Wormhole is close enough to our jump off.

As an aside, both neighboring Class 2's so far have had active POS's and High Sec exits, as well as very few sig's. Could bode poorly for potential to raid when our wormhole bottoms out. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Fly Safe,
Mick

First Night

Just a quick report on the first night in the new wormhole.

The Wormhole D382 moved and this was very good news, as the static to a Class 2 was the more important of the two connections. The Low Sec Wormhole A239 had not yet moved on the initial scan, and at the end of the night I did not feel like scanningthe system down again to see if it was static. I will save that for tonight.

A quick scan of the neighboring Class 2 W-space yielded a High Sec exit that ended up being 7 jumps from my base of operations. I quickly rallied the Orca and fit it for a mobile base of operations, flipped my Abby and Harb setups for Wormhole running, twisted the arm of a corp mate and off we went to run some anomolies.

While it took most of my time to get the stuff jumped in, we did manage to get 3 anomolies run and probably netted close to 100M in salvage thanks to 16 Melted Nano's. With a Beam Abby, Pulse Harb, and Drake these sites went down pretty quick. The Beam Abby is probably the worst of the three ships for running Class 2 Anomolies, as there were only a few BS level ships. Will need to work on its setup for Class 2 anomolies. It really is setup more for Radar and Mag sites.

While my Corp Mate jumped back to our base of operations, I remained in the hole with the Abby, Harb and Orca (with scanning ships in the Orca).

Tonight, I will confirm if the A239 is static and continue to run some anomolies.

Fly Safe,
Mick