Learner FC - Welps for all

So my alliance are asking for people to step forward and have ago at FCing, so I thought I would give it a crack, and document my fleets as and when they happen. After all, what’s so bad about losing a few internet spaceships?

My first fleet went out last Friday, the ships were t1 cruiser and the fits were armour tanked brawlers, my favourite. A few people moaned about the choice of armour as shields have more speed but I have poor shield skills and I love blasters! After forming up and some bullying encouragement on coms we set off down the chain into low-sec of the Aridia region. After consulting DOTLAN I decided to head for Onanam, it had seen the most kills in the last 24 hours so away we went, it took me a fair while (and a gentle reminder) to remind me that fleet boosts were a thing, and I could warp the squad! (My advice to any new prospective FC is to ask somebody to explain fleet/squad/wing boosts and how to control them, it’s confusing to say the least!).

We had a very lucky encounter with a retriever on the way, the unfortunate soul jumped into our impromptu gate-camp and promptly exploded. Why ever they thought that was a smart idea I don’t know?

We reached our destination without much fuss but there was nobody around to kill or be killed by. After further DOTLAN consultation it seemed as if it wasn't worth going anywhere else, so we started to slowly head home. I noticed a few of the gates were fairly active so we set up another gatecamp. After a while a Viator blockade runner jumped through, somebody got tackle and we started chewing away on it.  Now, alarm bells should have been going off here for several reasons:

1.      This guy shouldn't have got caught.
2.       He was tanking our combined DPS way too well.
3.       He wasn't really making an attempt to get back to the gate or align to a celestial

My inexperience lead me to ignore all of the signs hindsight has provided with me and a few seconds later a thanatos, appeared on grid along with a harbinger and proteus, it was hot drop o’ clock!. I was primaried and blasted off the field but the rest of the fleet managed to get out. We lost one further cruiser to the thanatos’ fighters but with the help of that retriever we won the isk war for the evening. And now I have a kill mail with a carrier killing me on it - bonus!  

As a learning experience it was good, I wish we would have got into a proper fight – or at least tried to put some bait out for a better challenge but that will come in time.  I learnt that scouts are always good, bait is always to be taken, and hot drops are not fair.