Elite Dangerous Space Tourism - Sol

Hey space cadets, what is going on?
I'm Cmdr TwingTwang and welcome to the Sol tourist board!

I'm afraid I don't have any hard stories for you this week - its just some shots from a jaunt across the galaxy by some Alliance Pilots.  In this iconic journey we took the Classic Cobra detailed here and headed out for the second star to the right, linking together Elite, Frontier and Elite Dangerous in an old-meets-new retro revival.

This week we took a wing to Sol to see the sights.  The trip from Lave to Sol isn't that far and even a reasonable vessel can make it in a few jumps with a single stop to scoop fuel.

The box formation is a little difficult to hold steady, although we got by with only a couple of bumps and scrapes along the way.  Formation flying is useful and practical in a combat zone, but tight boxes like this are insane under the heat of fire.  We were kissing inches from each other to get everybody in shot, although looking at the picture we had loads of clearance.

 

Three of us in a wedge formation, gazing at a tiny blue marble we once called home. Holding the wedge formation is easier than the box, even with the Cobra restricted cockpit view.  Like a predator, the ships view is biased toward looking forward, but as long as the two wingmen are in the right position behind the leader then it all works well.

After earth, we took a trip to Mars High to sell the cargo holds full of rares we all carried - this was our way of paying for the trip - and then headed out to Jupiter.  The wing beacons and nav-lock system worked a treat for keeping us coordinated and while it could always do with some improvements, the few times we got interdicted we were able to drop in as a wing and sort out any trouble.

Jupiter looks weird no matter how you look at it.

Just how close can two Cobras get without touching? The answer, is VERY close indeed. We needn't have been so worried about the formation shots - there is loads of clearance between to Cobras.

Overall we learnt a lot, got a team route in over 100Ly jumping together, had a few interdictions, payed off my federal fines, took some good shots but had a huge amount of fun on our first Space Tourism trip around Sol.

The next trip will be more coordinated, and we'll probably take a couple of wings out for maneuvers to flex the Alliance Fleet a little and get some great formation flight practice in.

I'm Cmdr TwingTwang, Fly Casual everybody!