How NOT to use a Cynabal

So I'm tooling around in a thrasher, killing a couple carebears here and there when I notice someone with a GCC in local on my way down the lowsec pipe. After some scanning around I notice a Cynabal on scan in a safespot, so I just move on. An hour or so later on my way back out of the pipe the same guy, and the same Cynabal are still around. The beauty of the T1 frigate is the price, since its so cheap I have no problem engaging things that outclass me, since there's no real risk for me.

I warp to the gate leading to highsec where the Cynabal is sitting, just to see what he's up to. I'm thinking maybe I can tackle him after he GCC's on a badger or something coming through, but to my surprise he turns on his MWD and bumps me and engages me. However to his surprise he's not hitting me, he made the mistake of starting the engagement at about 700m which allowed me to be under his guns before it ever began. The gateguns and my 200ish DPS made short work of his shields, and once he was at 1/2 armor he tried aligning to warp out. While he was gaining distance he managed to actually hit me with a few shots and quickly brought me down to structure but it was too late.

- KILLMAIL -

[ 2011.03.07 01:53:08 ] Night Angelo > how the f*** did u tank me
[ 2011.03.07 01:53:29 ] Joseph Dreadloch > you missed for the first 1/2 of the fight
[ 2011.03.07 01:53:35 ] Joseph Dreadloch > i was up close under your guns
[ 2011.03.07 01:53:46 ] Night Angelo > unf***ing un real

Turns out he had T1 guns fit, and a pretty weak tank. He was using a 250m ISK ship with T1 guns to pop frigates and haulers on a gate. The lure of the 'shiny' ship is strong, and I'll admit when I was relatively new I too flew ships I wasn't properly skilled for. There's no reason to be in a faction ship in lowsec, when you don't even have the skills to fit it out with T2 gear.