You are doing it wrong! Part 3

Part 3. The Miner.

After what seemed was an eternity, Armand finally stepped out of the Bantam and is enjoying the high-life in a Retriever. He is currently based in Mista and with a group of 3 drones (soon to be 4) defending him from the pesky rats life is good. Or so I thought...

Armand for the must part is a loner. He undocks, flies to a belt and does his thing quietly. Its been like this for a long time since the Bantam was no good for any corp ops. With the very limited amount of skills he was forced to dock after filling up his cargo hold since there was no bigger ship to fly all that ore back to the station. Everyone that has been in a retriever knows how painful that is. The thing takes FOREVER to align and warp.

Things got better when Gallante Industrial III completed and a Mark III was added to the hangar. After warping to a full belt on a quiet system I could mine with multiple jet cans and then go back for the Mark to quickly pick up all the ore. This combined with an improvement in my refining skills gave me unprecedented amount of income. I started to *see* what mining was all about... TONS of ISK! But is there more to this...

That answer to that question came to me in two separate nights. On Monday, as I was doing missions with Dante (I just now realized I forgot about that in my PVE update), I entered a system with multiple blues including corpmates. They had a mining op in low sec for profit. I was in system anyway, so accepted their fleet invitation. I would kill the spawns in their belt and then go around clearing other belts until the spawns came back to them. At the end of the night besides a very generous tip for my assistance I had gained 2 more valuable things. First was a new group of friends and second a group to mine with. I'm in the process of getting a second retriever to have it available to me in low/null sec so I can join them. Mining solo got to be the worst profession in EVE.

Then on Tuesday I had my first ice mining op with the corp. After fitting my ice harvesters and making my way to the system I joined them in an ice belt. It was the first time I was working with an Orca. WOW! That thing is big. I wasn't there as long as I wished I had (next time I have to logout the night before in the op's system to save the flight time), so I don't know how profitable it will be for me. Nevertheless it was very rewarding. I felt that I was helping my corp/alliance in a positive way.

With the incredible income potential and the type of people I've met during these operations I'm considering re-arranging my skill schedule to drop or post-pone some skills in favor of those needed for a Hulk and a Mackinaw. This doesn't mean that I wont be doing production/invention. That is still the end goal, but it may be longer than originally planned. The good thing is that I don't see a need to go beyond those 2 ORE ships. Once there I can go full force to my production goals (t2 ships, t2 drones, t2 repairs and t2 ammo and guns).

I'm also keeping an eye on the T3 stuff. It is likely for this to take me at least another year. Who know how many other changes there will be to this by that time?

Here I'm including two pics from the ice ops. The mining op (including Orca) and my new retriever.