It's doable.
Not sure if you're refering to the patrols in... Argon?, or the one that stops you at the hephaestus gate, so I'll give you tips for both.
1) Yes, trying to take them on atm, unless you have at least t2 countermeasures is pretty much straight up death.
So don't.
While you're in the Pirate mastiff, pirates are neutral to you.
Use this to sneak around the system's edge and get at the hephestus gate from behind.
With a t2 radar, you can time it just about rght to slip between the coverage of the three patrols.
Once you're in hephestus, just move away from the gate.
The NESF patrol's radar is about as good as yours, so play ostrich ('if I can't see you, you can't see me'), and you should be okay.
2, and very important in Hard mode) DISABLE FIGHTER AUTO-LAUNCH.
This saves you a
lot of aggravation when you get jumoed as soon as you enter a system.
Of course, there are times when auto-launching helps, so pause whenever you enter a system, which'll give you the few seconds you need to figure out what's going on; so you can decide intelliganelt whether you're better off launching or not.
(Since you can't cancel a launch order, you're better off not having it issue in the first place.)
3) The patrol's 'spawn, advance, talk, attack' script runs in real-time.
Increase the game-speed when you move away, and they'll be out of sight before they even finish talking.
tl;dr:
gl hf
