Echo Squadron

There are many knowledgeable people in this squad. No matter what your question – be it ship crafting, game mechanics or just how to do “x”…someone always has your back. Thank goodness too, given that the learning curve in Elite Dangerous is not only steep but seemingly never ending.

But one man stands out in this sea of helpful CMDRs. No matter what the question, Madproforg knows the answer. His seemingly tireless campaign to educate us on every single detail this game has to offer is as astounding as it is commendable. His advice is always accurate, succinct and spans all aspects of the game.

It should therefore come as no surprise that he will henceforth be known as simply “Guru”.

CMDR Pandrea Xeres was discussing an Anaconda exploration build, during which it was was suggested he purchase from Jameson Memorial for easy outfitting. “What do you mean you’re not yet Elite despite having nearly 1,700 hours game time.”

Cmdr Gerbreal was awarded this callsign when he finally realised he’d been accidentally playing Elite at LOW RESOLUTION graphics settings since day 1, only to realise their error with the release of Odyssey!

Cmdr Cromelech was awarded the callsign “Vulture” during The Fatherhood’s first Free For All Tournament. Pilots were required to participate in a minimum of 7 games to score, and Cmdr Cromelech came in second.

Sloth Peralta, now know also as “Bot”, once took a trip to Hutton Orbital. During his long flight, he wasn’t paying attention, as he was planning his next big exploration trip into the black. He overshot Hutton Orbital by 1,000,000 ls, and had to pull a u-turn, taking another 15 minutes.

CMDR John Harmon, so called forth “Reboot” for his dedication of starting it all over again. Upon the release of odyssey, and instead of stretching his legs, he so chose a whole brand new pair, wiped his save and started once again.

Cmdr pin72 “Denied” had an expensive day that day. Instead of exploring he decided to camp in the bubble until Odyssey was released. While out working on his combat rating, he picked up a 50m odd credit mission to fight a bunch of pirates and a few mission on the side.

Well, he got all 50+ pirates, but still needed to collect his mission rewards. En route, he dropped into a planetary base and in about 30 seconds his ‘vette is destroyed, and he’s rebuying at a detention center.

What’s a poor CMDR to do but try again? Before he even managed to get to ask for landing clearance, he’s back at the detention center. Even after visiting an interstellar factor to clear his name, he found nothing — no bounty.

One more try at the planetary base and… dead again. Finally looking at the base in Inara he discovers the base is managed by the pirates he’d been hunting and he was no longer welcome at their base! 90m credits in rebuy down the drain. So much for that 50m credit haul.

Cmdr Sloth “Bot” Peralta kept getting interrupted by Dad Bot turning his words into the most classic of dad-puns, “Hi _____, I’m Dad.” All of this after a conversation about him needing a bot to post his sloth memes. Getting the “Bot” callsign was simply inevitable.

Cmdr Qildail was awarded “Webb” after the James Web Telescope. Cmdr Qildail, a deep space explorer, has provided countless high quality images from the black. He has fundamentally changed how we see the Elite: Dangerous universe.

Cmdr Kenaz made an impact on our Community Goals efforts with an impressive array of stats and graphs charting the progression of the Css that would put a business news channel to shame. In honor of this, he was awarded a callsign and is now known as Cmdr Kenaz “Stats”.

Jebediah invented the “one true salute” to piss off TK. It worked then, and still works today. o5

Cmdr huckleberry69 “Tripped” was awarded his callsign when he learned the value of module power management. On a quest to engineer his Federal Gunship for combat zones, he was hopping around all of the engineer sites. In the process, he was interdicted by a pirate. His ship, nearly finished engineering, gave him the confidence to teach the fella a lesson. He submits to the interdiction, spins around to scan the ship and deploy hard points when his ship grinds to a halt. His shields drop and life support kicks in. Turns out, he didn’t move the non-essential modules to a different power priority.

Luckily the pirate lost interest and jumped away, leaving Cmdr huckleberry to sort his ship out.

Cmdr Sugnit went above and beyond to pursue our machinations in LHS 28. He carved a vast swatch through the forces of LHS 28 Commodities leaving only wreckage and sublimating corpses. He earned an impressive bounty tally that may have totaled over a hundred million credits. For his efforts he was bestowed “The Jackal” callsign.

Cmdr Toxophilite “Jones” was awarded his callsign in honor of discovery of some new Guardian ruins. His callsign is a nod to “Dr. Jones” of Indiana Jones fame.

Cmdr Leesti was aware the callsign “Zeppelin” in recognition of holding the record for the most helium-rich gas giants discovered in a single system.

Cmdr Drazkul happened to mention he was food phobic while walking round Manchester. When asked what he did eat, he replied chips and chicken nuggets, hence the “Mc” in front of his name.

Cmdr Andy “Hornet” Graham’s callsign, HORNET: He Only Really Needs Everybody’s Timezone

CMDR Murvkins was awarded the callsign Loadmaster in recognition of his devotion to the repair of Cartwright Terminal, demonstrated by flying 2 Type-9’s.

Cmdr TacMedic1112 had just purchased a shiny new shield generator, but vented that his shields still remained red on his HUD. After some back-and-forth consultation with CMDR Brian “UI” o’Fish, the issue was identified.

From Cmdr Brian “UI” o’Fish’s analysis:

Having reviewed the situation, my diagnosis is that the shop which sold you that shield generator, has defrauded you. You actually do not have one fitted, only boosters.

To which Cmdr TacMedic1112 replied:

Bastards!!!

Clearly Cmdr “Booster” TacMedic1112 wasn’t born yesterday. Well, not anymore at least.

CMDR Bennerz (AKA CMDR Ben) blew up a Beluga while failing passenger missions in LP 417. He claims he didn’t realize how fragile they were and asked for some advice on how to bring the hull down in a more controlled manner.

The ever helpful CMDR “Jailbird” Jack_Harper offered this choice advice:

“Attention passengers, we will now be grinding against the station communications array. Please sit in a calm, orderly fashion as we listen to the lovely sounds of metal on metal.”

Unfortunately, to avoid blowing up, just take it slow.

CMDR Ben replied:

It was my first time… the excitement got to me. I couldn’t contain myself or take it slow… and then… Pop! All over and done with in a nanosecond.

Congratulations CMDR Ben “Grinder”

CMDR I Am Bob Dobbs was getting ready for a Colonia cruise by getting in good with the engineers. He heard an engineer needed sensor fragments and set out to collect them from a Thargoid site. Filling up his ship with about twenty-five sensors, he started heading back to his carrier. While flying back, his ship starts disintegrating at an alarming rate. The canopy busted open and he barely landed in time with no HUD.

After jumping his carrier to the engineer’s system, he flew over to their base from the host star. His ship began falling apart again–an even closer call than last time. Once again, he barely docked with no canopy, no HUD, and less than 30 seconds of life support left.

Going to turn in the sensors, he discovered he was short by four sensors, and he’d been gathering Thargoid sensors the whole time. He took off from the engineers, dumping all the Thargoid sensors buy one above the pad. Of course, that earned him a littering fine.

He started the return trip to the Thargoid site in his DBX, leaving his carrier behind. On the way, he got hyperdicted by three Thargoids, his first encounter ever. They shut him down, scanned him, and left for better things. Eventually he got his sensor fragments and got serviced by the engineer.

To this day, he’s kept one of the Thargoid sensors on his carrier as a reminder of the whole crazy affair.

Once upon a time, CMDR Tannock was enraged after being ganked in our PG. Sounds unbelievable, right? After a thorough investigation by the powers that be it turns out this is completely and utterly FALSE!

He had accidentally logged into Open!

From that time on, he’s been our CMDR “Not So Private” Tannock.

One day a short and tragic story appeared in #thargoid-channel:

“So having scraped some parts from the Challenger, I took the DBS out for a wing session with Legion_r917th “Stierlitz”, Marina97 “Meltdown” and XpressioN tonight.

– One basilisk down with 100% hull remaining (thanks Legion)
– Next Basilisk spammed invisible shutdown fields but still scraped through.

Legion had to leave us and that’s when things turned sour.

Third Basilisk, I took a couple of volleys head on, which put me in a delicate position, around 20% hull remaining. Decided to keep on soldiering through. Managed to get in and destroy a heart but left with 7% hull.

Luckily, our wing packed limpets. While avoiding the swarm and unnaturally fast Thargoid, just about got close enough for a limpet but also in range of the Basilisk.

What I didn’t realise was Xpression had double crossed us and sided with the Thargoids – he put enough force into his limpet to take me down for good.

I had a sombre moment reading the white text on a black background.

‘Ship Destroyed’.”

After lengthy discussion and a vote, Veterans decided that CMDR MorallyGrayArea shall be known as “Limp Bzkit”.

It is always with the greatest respect that we grant a callsign, and this occasion is no different.
The following story was shared by a vitness, CMDR Jarasis Par:

“We were sitting in comms, Gnome had gone for a #2, he was gone for not 15 seconds and his ship had blown up next to the carrier he was docking at. We started laughing our butts off and we pulled out our screen recorders, waiting for Gnome to return. He got back with an absolutely priceless reaction and we all, after a few minutes of straight screaming in laughter, decided the callsign should be SkuttleButt, refering to how he came running back out of the bathroom, god bless that moment!”

Veterans concurred event to be worthy and name suitable.

So CMDR “Skuttlebutt” Suicidal Gnme earned his new callsign: “Skuttlebutt”

CMDR Jarasis Par rushed to the aid of his comrades who had poked a bear with their SRVs (NPC Type-10 parked on the surface). Trouble was they were on a planet that was basically in the photosphere of a G-class star, and cooked his ship making his approach. He managed to save the SRVs, land for the usual shenanigans, and make it to a starport for repairs.
By the Veteran’s vote, Jarasis Par is now known as “Sunburn”.

After conducting some shady operations, Cmdr Felix Felixson had a bunch of bounties on his head. After finally finding a station which wouldn’t instantly vapourise him for being a wanted criminal, Felix was making his final approach when he was interdicted by an NPC bounty hunter. Submitting to the interdiction, Felix turned on his pursuer, deployed hardpoints and promptly ran out of fuel. His ship drifting without power, Felix was quickly destroyed by the bounty hunter. Turns out that Felix was “bingo on fuel”…

Nightfury “Wolf knob”, had a knack for finding wolf-rayet stars. Quite a few of them. He also found some “phallic” looking systems.

Simple really. Ask him for a “star pic”.

Once upon a time cmdr Linsan decided to seek volunteers for BGS priority mission in #pc-wing-requests channel by copying said mission to the channel.
Not only that, but he also copied global BGS ping, which is included in such missions, resulting in him pinging whole BGS crew, including managers and rangers.
And so, by veterans vote, cmdr Linsan now known as Megaphone.

Cmdr Necra Requiem drunk-purchased a Vulture and flew it without rebuy. The next day, he discovered it was missing, presumed destroyed, but has no recollection of what happened.
Following a vote, he is now known as Necra “Black Out” Requiem.

Once upon a time I was hunting thargoid interceptors in a wing of 3 our other cmdrs: cmdr XpressioN , cmdr Linsan and, the reason you’re reading this, cmdr Marina97.

When we were bringing down yet another Basilisk, cmdr Marina97 engaged silent running to gain some heat and burn off caustic damage. It’s a viable and popular tactic for such situations… except when you forget to turn it off and continue fighting interceptor.

Marina went up to 2200% heat by the time the Basilisk was dead and she noticed that something’s amiss.

And so, from that moment cmdr Marina97 is known as “Meltdown”

– cmdr Legion_r917th of The Fatherhood

“Right. Now pay attention 007. First, your new car. BMW Agile 54 with gears. All points radar. Self destruct system. And, naturally, all the usual refinements. Now, this I’m particularly proud of – behind the headlights, stinger missiles!”

On 20th January, 2021, CMDR DsTrbD NrD was playing around with CMDRs Gareth Shieldstryke and I am Bob Dobbs in system Flyiedgiae QN-T D3-17 planet AB1 whilst on one of the many Colonia Cruise pitstops. DsTrbd decided he wanted to have some fun with launching his SRV into space, much to the crazed looks of everyone around him. The CMDR decided to jump onto his ship, and then promptly dismiss it, causing him to launch high up into the sky… except the CMDR didn’t account for gravity and ended up continously floating upwards. After about 6-odd hours, his buddies decided to ride with it and occasionally “nudged” him higher into the stratosphere, ultimately ending up at a whopping 2.75ls off the surface of the planet, all the while popping on his favourite David Bowie CD and singing along to “Space Oddity” as the whole scenario played out. Thus, with suggestion from several CMDRs, he was bestowed the honorable callsign of “Major Tom”.

Sopues “Albuquerque” was on an exploration trip…but lost his way to Sag A, taking sharp turns around the Centre of the Galaxy. He says it was due to an error in rotating the map…

He eventually made it!

He’s an odd one, that Legion_r917th. One minute he’s organizing SRV Mountaineering Events, the next he’s disappearing due to some… [REDACTED] stuff for [REDACTED]. It’s like he’s a ghost… or James Bond or something, I don’t know. I actually caught up with him once and asked him about it, but all he replied to me was: “Странное свойство моей физиономии: всем кажется, что меня только что где—то видели (My physiognomy has a strange quality: everyone thinks that they’ve just seen me somewhere.) And then he vanished.

What a strange CMDR…“Stierlitz”

– [REDACTED] of [REDACTED]

During one of SRV Mountain Climbing event on Pomeche 3 C, after 3+ hours of climbing and driving, when our group was 200 m from summit an… accident had occurred. CMDR Kik Ravendish decided to celebrate out arrival to the peak by some jumping in his SRV and flew a few dozens meters up. As it happened, just in that same moment CMDR Chris Xander was doing a flyby above us and Kik’s SRV got clipped, smashing to smithereens midair.

Thus, CMDR Kik Ravendish is now known as “Clipped”

(and Chris Xamder is “Clipper”)

During one of SRV Mountain Climbing event on Pomeche 3 C, after 3+ hours of climbing and driving, when our group was 200 m from summit an… accident had occurred. CMDR Chris Xander, after losing his last SRV to a crevice, was following us at low altitude in his Imperial Clipper. When we were at our last meters before reachin the peak, he decided to give us a congratulatory flyby. As it happened, just in that same moment CMDR Kik Ravendish decided to celebrate our arrival by some jumping in his SRV and flew a few dozens meters up, which resulted in him being clippered by Chris and absolutely smashed to smithereens midair.

Thus, CMDR Chris Xander is now known as “Clipper”

(and Kik Ravendish is “Clipped”)

After a hilarious tale involving a guardian beacon and the string of epic fails that continued afterwards, CMDR iplayagame very much earned his callsign of “99 Problems”.

As the tale was epic, it deserves to be recorded for eternity, thusly:

• does not get a guardian key to drop… because scanning from a fighter does not work. “i had to go back to the mothership, i believe”
• once that is resolved… “got it. oops. no collector limpets”
• well, manual scooping? … “my beluga’s too fat”
• finally managed… “tapped it out of the little hole with my fighter”
• lands fighter by crashing it into the beluga. “i mean it’s how i always get back to my ship”
• game fatally crashes
• but starts okay again. now just needs to get back without dying…

“We’re all in voice comms for the Skardee Mountain Expedition and a certain CMDR ObjectofEnmity developed a fun – read annoying – habit of causing ruckus everywhere he goes. From bumping into people, to flying over hills and landing on people, to “accidentally” shooting people, to just being an absolute disaster. It was so bad that we likened it to the destructive force of a wrecking ball, and, due to his history with Blue Squadron and their musically inclined callsigns, dubbed him “Miley” as he did, infact, multiple times, come in like a Wrecking Ball.”

– An excerpt from [REDACTED] personal log dated 01/12/3306

Once upon a time, our beloved game launched with lot of press on a new distribution channel, the Epic Game Store, and even was given away for free, so a lot of new members arrived, and their application process of course was disturbed by the inevitable bugs that are always present around stuff launching anew…

And so it happened that our CMDR Danieltails was the first one to come in on this new venue, and verily, he showed a huge amount of patience with the process, endured numerous trials and tribulations, subsisting for a while on peach juice alone…. i.e. he was a real Patient Zero with enthusiasm.

CMDR “Jailbird” Jack_Harper.

For failure to figure out the Interstellar Factors and finding himself repeatedly in the detention ship, he has been bestowed the callsign “Jailbird”.

“So, I think that the Interstellar Factors didn’t work for me. It’s just that I can’t remember when or where my bounties came from and if I went to a IF or not.

The other day I was at an IF but in a different ship.

And here I was going system to system paying bounties directly thinking I had a bug. Been to so many detention facilities in the past two days.”

From Lost Souls 2 Expedition, CMDR Reinhardt became the de-facto ringleader for PC Squadron when it came to coordinating mass jumps to the next waypoint, and did a fantastic job. Arranging mass jumps over VC was like herding cats, and was dubbed “Herder” for the remainder of the expedition. It stuck and became official. This is also probably the most accurate description of “organizing” those bloody mass jumps.

CMDR Ed Lave, frustrated at not being able to deploy his Detailed Surface Scanner, moved closer to the planet.

“Too far for DSS deployment.” He moved closer still. “Too far for DSS deployment.”

“Oh this ******* game is ******* ******* ****!” were the words registered to the flight recorder.

It was subsequently ascertained that Ed “Mr. Magoo” had targeted a different planet.

At a Lost Souls Expediton 2 weekly waypoint, CMDR DruidicFireball found himself alone. He checked his position at geological site 5. He was at geo 5. Nonplussed, he contacted his fellow CMDRs. He asserted he was at geo 5 on the correct planet. In this assertion he was correct, it was ascertained that he was, indeed, at geo 5 on the correct planet at the correct time on the correct date.

The waypoint was bio 5, on the other side of the planet.

Here’s another one straight from the horse’s mouth:

“My moment of glory : was at an engineer’s station getting my exploraconda ready for Lost Souls. As I was leaving the lighting was perfect for a great photo opp. Went into external camera mode and started looking for the perfect angle / shot …. then noticed the station started firing on someone and wondered what the poor cmdr had done …then quickly realized it was firing at me ( I forgot to clear the pad ), exited camera mode and tried to boost away but too late.. rebuy ! The worse thing is, I never got the pic … I also missed the opportunity of getting a pic of my ship blowing up.”

Casbalti is a technology genius, and has no problems whatsover in getting voice packs and other useful plugins working with his E:D setup. None whatsoever.

While out mining, Scrubbs couldn’t understand why his ship was overheating, ever after he deployed heatsinks. After sharing this problem with his fellow wing mates, it was quickly pointed out that he had zero pips assigned to “weapons”…

In his defense, he wanted it mentioned that he was quite sedated on painkillers at the time…

As part of [REDACTED], Spidey002 went on a one-man murder spree, taking down a commendable number of enemies of The Fatherhood with selfless regard for his own notoriety and reputation.

Pretty straightforward here: After a long absence, some started to wonder if HoPpo was still alive due to his stretch of inactivity. Their fears were calmed when he made his triumphant return to the “hood”, as he puts it.

Did you hear the one about the guy who went all the way out to Hutton Orbital and returned without a mug? Well, doomeddonut has….on 3 separate occasions. To his defense, the first time he visited he had no idea there even was a mug in the gift store. Some time later, a little embarrassed and determined to add this little ceramic momento to his trophy shelf, he made the long trip back out there in his brand new T7….you know, the T7 that requires a LARGE landing pad to dock….needless to say, no mug on that day either. Two strikes down for our intrepid explorer when a mistake at the Mission Board in Hajangai sends him to Hutton on a cargo run loaded with lots of beer, and very little sleep….after arriving in a drunken stupor, happy to get off-loaded and zip back to Schwann as quick as possible for some much needed shuteye, he enters witchspace for a 3rd time without filling that space on the shelf….

“Fourth time’s a charm though”

David Arnold’s callsign has two origins. First, he is recognised numerous times in the Hall of Fame, some good and some bad! Secondly, and more relevantly, he is an outstanding contributor to The Fatherhood’s faction simulation activities.

Cmdr “Turtle” Archley’s story is so good, we decided to let him tell it himself:

My call sign? Everybody asks about my call sign. The story is a bit embarrassing, to be honest. It all started, when I was exploring some Guardian ruins. Synuefe region, I think. So there I was, exploring the ruins, when my scanner picked up a ship. I naturally drove to check it out. An Anaconda, it was. And much to my surprise, a Fatherhood one. I hailed, but there was no response. Asleep at the helm, I thought, and decided to arrange a bit of a surprise. I’d hop on top of the Anaconda with my SRV. Naturally, it didn’t go as planned. I underestimated the size of the ship and the effect of gravity, and went smack on the side of the ship. I landed, upside down like an up-ended turtle or beetle, beside the ship. Being too close to the ship, I couldn’t use the SRV thrusters. And of course, then Commander Olthuis comes to his senses. If it wasn’t an airless planet, I’d probably have heard his laughter even through the hull.

Cmdr “Meticulous” Uhler Soft has this incurable itch to scan every single body in every system that he visits…including those that are over 300kls away from system arrival. He has traveled over 130kly and visited over 3,100 systems, each and every one fully mapped…

Cmdr “Eclipse” M Clanger produced a stunning set of images when he captured a double-eclipse from his SRV.

On an exploration journey, Boostrapped stopped to make some AFMU repairs to his modules…including his life support system. After repairs had concluded, he forgot to reactivate his life support system, leading to a very slow death…

Cmdr “Bob Ross” Idirian fancied a shiny new paint job for his Cutter. So he bought one. Except he didn’t, he mistakenly bought a Clipper paint job instead. Two paint jobs later, some claim it was a mistake, others claim it was due to his love of all things painting. Thus “Bob Ross” was the suggested and accepted callsign.