Got in nearly 150 jumps again tonight. Early Saturday seems to be a likely arrival time.

I did 100 jumps last night and another 150 tonight. There are still 50 more before getting to Sacaqawea Space Port. After that I'm estimating about 300 jumps to Colonia.

354 jumps to my chosen waypoint: Sacaqawea Space Port.

Chosen stop for the night: Swoiwns DT-D b59-4. I've done about 54 jumps, averaging a touch over 1 minute per jump. I'm guessing there is about another 650 jumps to reach Colonia, or 11 hours.

I should be able to get 2-3 hours a night in. Looks like I'll be arriving some time Saturday. Hopefully.

I arrived a bit late for the big mass jump. Apparently there were over 100 commanders in the instance! Many computers crashed!

Luckily, Cmdr Rikbardoon went back and organised a small mass jump for a few commanders who had missed out, including me.

It's not the same as 100 commanders, but jumping with 7 other commanders is much better than none!

The destination was Running Man Sector WP-W b2-0 where the carriers awaited most of the commanders.

That is, except the commanders foolish enough to take on the Outlander Challenge. That includes me.

I'll start by jumping back to the Bubble to complete the Community Goal, then set out for Colonia.

I logged back on the next day. It was still many hours before the EU mass-jump (I'm in the APAC one), but I thought I'd see who was around.

Initially nobody was around. I got out in the SRV and drove into the city via the entry ramps on the sides. I tried to launch myself onto the dome with the bar and other facilities, but ended up on a launch pad and getting a bounty!

It was a bit exciting driving back out the city and dodging skimmers to get far enough for a safe ship recall and jump to a nearby Interstellar Factor on Lewitt Relay in [NGC 1981 Sector AL-X c1-12](NGC 1981 Sector AL-X c1-12).

When I got back I tried landing on the top of the skyscraper, but it didn't work.

It's always a good idea to keep the fuel tanks topped up - especially when it's as small as the Sidewinders!

By this time a few more commanders had turned up. I parked between two Beluga's - they're a lot bigger than the Sidewinder.

I remember flying a Beluga all through Distant Worlds 2.

Tomorrow night is the APAC mass jump.

Before Distant Worlds 3 I flew out to NGC 1981 Sector ZU-Y d27 7 c to see if I could meet up with any other commanders.

There were several ships. People were jumping around on foot. At one point a Beluga took off while Cmdr Kuun Lan was standing on top. It did not end well.

Strangely, the other commanders could not see the body?

While discussing ship loadouts with the Viper Mk4 pilots, I realised I could have installed Enhanced Performance Thrusters on my Sidewinder. It would increase the heat a bit, but it would be much more fun to fly.

So I flew back to the Bubble, purchased and engineered new Thrusters. That also required a new and re-engineered Power Plant. Then I flew back!

Now I'm ready to go!

Thargoid Materials

Ever since I lost all my Thargoid materials, I have been visiting the remnants of the Titan Cocijo in the Sol system every now and again. I have been able to recover a lot of the items, apart from the Thargoid Hearts (71/78) and Titan Drive Components (23/39).

Distant Worlds 3 Preparation

A lot of the time has been spent preparing for the Distant Worlds 3 Expedition. My original plan had been to refit my burning station evacuation transport - the Orca "Flamin' Help" and turn it into the deep space exploration ship "Big Silver".

However, when the new Caspian Explorer was announced, I knew that that was the ship to take. It's by far the best ship for long distance travel, plus it can carry a huge amount of gear with little penalty in terms of jump range.

I hitched a ride on a fleet carrier with an early build to Colonia, primarily to pin some engineering blueprints, but also for a good travelling test by flying back to the bubble via neutron stars.

In the past I avoided the "neutron highway", but with the vastly reduced rate of damage with the Caspian Explorer it was a fast and (relatively) safe mode of travel. A couple of times the neutron beams spun the ship right around so it was pointing back at the star - a bit scary!

With two extra class 6 fuel tanks to double the capacity from 128T to 256T, I was able fly all the way to the approximate halfway point, Sacaqawea Space Port, without refuelling and with a third of the tank left. I refuelled and repaired, then completed the trip to the Bubble, again without needing to refuel.

The Outlander Challenge

After finishing my fitout of the Caspian Explorer, I read about the Outlander Challenge. This involves flying a Sidewinder from the DWE3 start point to Colonia, before re-joining the main DWE3 expedition.

The original Outlander Challenge was to start a new commander and do the minimum upgrades to the Sidewinder (FSD, DSS and fuel scoop) before setting off to Colonia. The idea is that you'd scan systems on the way and by the time you got to Colonia you'd have whole lot of data to turn in for credits. Then you'd be set for your new 'life' in Colonia.

Since I'm doing this as part of the DWE3 expedition, and that there is only a week to do it, I've fully engineered and fitted out my Sidewinder, including a class 1 FSD booster I found sitting in my stored modules for some reason. I have no idea why I would have bothered with a class 1 in the past, but it was a welcome find.

The result is my "Outlander", capable of ~33Ly jumps. That doesn't sound like much these days, but compared to my DWE1 Asp Explorer with a 28Ly range, it's not that bad.

So last night I decided to buy a Squadron Carrier, mostly because I hoped it would make it easier to share my things with my alt accounts, and potentially others. As I don't need the expense of my Fleet Carrier as well I needed to transfer everything across. Ships were no problem, but I had a pile of mostly Thargoid things in the cargo hold.

Without giving it any thought, I loaded up my Panther Clipper and set off. The first sign of trouble was effectively my last - "thrusters offline". I was confused for a couple of seconds before I realised my PC has no corrosion resistant cargo racks.

I my panic, I decided the best thing was to jettison everything Thargoid, reboot and repair and switch to my Python that does have corrosion resistant racks. As I was landing on my carrier, I realised that switching ships would make a new instance and so lose everything, so I instead immediately headed back to where I'd dumped everything and tried to recover something, but all was gone.

Sacrificed to my stupidity were:

• 78 Thargoid Hearts
• 10 Orthrus Tissue samples
• 5 Titan Deep tissue samples
• 7 Thargoid Scythe samples
• 11 caustic tissue samples
• 11 Titan partial tissue samples
• 11 Protective membranes
• 3 Thargoid organ samples
• 6 Thargoid resin
• 50 Thargoid sensors
• 39 Titan Drive components

The last in particular...I don't know how many days they represent.

The local star finally rose for some good shots of the graveyard:

View from above - there are 12 wrecks:

It's almost exactly three months to the day since I arrived in the Cancri Cluster. I've slowly surveyed my way through the cluster, scanning for any missing geological data as indicated by EDSM. I had also been scanning planetary rings, but when I noticed that EDSM still showed them as "missing data" I stopped.

On my way up I visited the "Transmission from Elysium" tourist beacon in ES Cancri. I expected another tourist beacon in HD 76133 (Anaconda's Graveyard), but instead only found a POI "Ultimate Destination" at 25.60/78.46 on HD 76133 1 c. There are the remains of many crashed Anacondas - a reminder of how exploration used to be. There is now no way to get stuck in a system where you cannot be rescued by a fleet carrier.

It also turns out I arrived at "Ultimate Destination" just after the local star had set. It appears I'll need to wait at least 2 days before it will rise again in order to be able to take a decent photo.