Right. So, you want to be able to safely turn in your ‘honestly found’ stolen cargo, eh? Shame about those ship and cargo scans when entering stations though. Those can make the pirates life a lot tougher (or shorter …) than needed.

Fret not though, because, as always; there is a solution for that.

This first one works only at mail slot stations, a.k.a. those huge spinning cubes and tube-likes in space.

When on approach, keep you speed at or just above 200 m/s and no station or ship scan will be able to grab you. Or even trigger, for that matter.
‘But this is so difficult!’, I hear you say, ‘especially when you are not facing the entrance head on.’.

True! But for that too there is a trick. Did you know, for example, that the entrance of those types of stations usually roughly faces the planetary body it orbits?

Aha! A clue, Sherlock!
So. When you are hurdling through space, on your way to the preferred station you want to unload your stolen, erm, sorry found, cargo at, do NOT keep your aim at the station itself, but instead point your helm at the moon or whatever it is orbiting.

When the moon gets really, really big (a.k.a.: you are getting close), you curve away and start heading for the station. To your astonishing surprise, you will see the station’s hologram rotate as you turn, and, surprise surprise, the entrance will appear right in front of you as soon as you exit super cruise.

Neat, huh?
The exact reason why the entrance usually faces the moon I do not know, but personally I think they do this so that when they empty the garbage cans and throw that stuff out the door, it gets pulled to the moon rather than to hang around in space. But maybe that’s just me …
But what if you just have to dock at one of those smaller station hanging around in space. You can’t fly into the landing platform at 200 m/s at one of those, and hope it will all be okay. Well technically you can, obviously, but your results may, well, vary.

So assuming you do your approach the fastest way you can while staying safe, chances are the station scan will trigger and you will see that dreaded ‘cargo scan’ message appear on your HUD. then what?

Then two things:
Deploying hard-points will (albeit temporarily) disrupt a scan. Keep in mind though, that if you approach -with- your hard-points already deployed, retracting and re-deploying them will do nothing … So, and this is considered good measure anyway, keep them tucked away nicely until you really need them.

Throwing a bunch of chaff out the door will have the same result: this too will disrupt a ship scan.

Hopefully, those two combined, will give you enough time to dock safely and ENTER THE STATION. This last bit should go without saying, but as long as you are sitting on the landing pad of a smaller station, you are sitting OUTSIDE and are therefore an easy to scan object.

So there you have it. Enjoy our smuggling, yer old pirate geezer, and remember to fly terrible.