Aye! The guy I killed said in local that he was surprised with how long I was able to tank the gate guns for, and to be honest so was I! I don't know if I'd like to press my luck in that kind of situation against another cruiser though, but I think it would definitely be close.

Absolutely. I think that's why I didn't like the Stabber, simply because it doesn't *feel* like a vagabond-lite. The fit I'm currently fielding is the dual-neut setup, with an armor tank. It served me well tonight (blog post coming soon), and I'm probably going to keep using it for a while yet, although the thought of trying out some different set-ups for it in the future does appeal to me.

Yes. Destroyers are the most used ships for this because they don't cost much more than a frigate, and they can put out a surprising amount of DPS. Some people do use other ships for ganking Hulks, but the reason / methods behind them are different. For example, some people will use 5 or so battleships fit with smartbombs to kill anywhere between 5 - 10 Hulks. This only works if the Hulks in question are clustered together, obviously.

The other way of doing it is to fit a Tempest in such a way that it will one-shot a Hulk. The Tempest fits I've tried have been able to deal 7500 points of damage in one volley, although this is very hit or miss for me because the success of this method depends on how much tank the Huk has fitted.

Incidentally, the fits I posted for the Catalyst are VERY easy to train for - less than 9 hours. Assuming you have none of these skills, you'll need (roughly):

Gallente Frigate 3 - 6 hours
Destroyers 1 - 10 minutes
Gunnery 1 - 5 minutes
Small Hybrid Turret 1 - 5 minutes
Weapon Upgrades 1 - 10 minutes
Energy Grid Updates 2 - 1 hour

All of those skills can be trained on trial accounts. Once you've got all of those, your best bet would be to get Gunnery and Small Hybrid Turret both upto level 4 to improve your DPS. Then you can go for Rapid Firing. All of this should take about 3 days worth of training.