Weekend War

So its the new year and to welcome it in, we got war dec'd. Again. This time it was by a couple strong members who left the alliance recently due to, as I understand it, a disagreement with a policy instated in the alliance that we are never to engage any industrial ships at any time, even if in low sec. This came as a result of our recent op in which we destroyed a Hulk. It really didn't bother me any to have this policy change but it seems these two disagreed with it. No surprise really when it was one of the two who had made a decision that day to attack the Hulk.

The war however only lasted a few days. Sometimes I feel so out of the loop on things... But either way, it seems their was some dispute between the two members that left the alliance and they split up. With only one person left in the original corp that war dec'd us, it was an obvious choice for him to withdraw. We did have one skirmish, of which I missed only because I was not on voice communications at the time. It was good to hear though that other than losing a Kestral, we managed to destroy a couple of their ships. One was a Minmatar battleship (forgetting which one) and the other was a Jaguar. The only encounter I had during this war was actually quite humorous.

On Saturday, I had just finished training for probing skills. Excited by my new-found ability, I decided to put together a Minmatar frigate, suitably named Probe, and head out to get a feel for probing. I was in a .7 system so no real worries (or so I thought) with fitting the ship with the probe launcher only. Before the training had completed, I'd found a Drake with my on-board scanner sitting close to my position where I was mining, that seemed to be without a pilot. Most likely it was in a POS somewhere but figured why not have a look when my training finished. Soon enough I was geared up and headed out. Obviously, having the skills to probe isn't the same as knowing HOW to probe. I had a tough time finding the Drake but when I saw a Jaguar on a scan, I decided to drop in and see what he was up to. Just for fun. It ended up being what could have turned into a slightly bad day for me. As I dropped out of warp, I was surprised to see the ship tagged on my overview as being at war with me! With a quick glance, I realized I had just dropped in on one of the two pilots in the enemy corporation. So as quick as I could, I aligned for a planet in the general direction I was facing and warped away. As soon as I came out of warp I turned and warped to the nearest station and docked. I then proceeded to bang my head against the inside of my pod for being so stupid to have not kept a better eye on the local comm channel.

The pilot and I exchanged a few chuckles with each other in first local then private message. He congratulated me on finding him with my probes, surprised as he was that I had warped in on him when he was trying to locate me. Surprised him just as much, which was probably the only reason I'd escaped. I admitted to him though that I hadn't even realized he was in system otherwise that event would've never taken place.

So yeah...chalk that one up to another lesson learned by this newb pilot. Besides the lesson that I really need to do some more research on how to utilize my new probing skills a little better...

-ML-