Yeah - coupled with Active Sky or something…gonna have to watch out for those turbulence AIRMETs! I like scrambled eggs though… 
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Gonna need a huge loan for all these pilots to be flying… Haha
At some point you’ll probably cross paths with @smokinhole‘s tragic couple. What an epilogue!
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I think that we may be able to start our own little companies and work toward contributing to the parent 
Yeah…I don’t know how the whole multiplayer company thing works yet…
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Yeah. The only thing that I have to go on was this statement:
“You can also ‘go global’ and create your own Virtual Airline and recruit other AH2 pilots to fly for you with attractive payouts, or you can join another pilot’s booming airline and fly for that alongside your own company.”
Just the last bit there. Assuming you could bring your plane with you - but that is a jump in magic logic
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We are going to have to recruit @fearlessfrog to come back and build us a Mudspike Air Cargo Holdings front end on the site and make us a Dispatchbot…
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For me, I think that I have two options for starter aircraft from my hanger (which is admittedly lighter than most ).
Looking at the stats for the AirFoilLabs Cessna-172S that I am thinking of starting with…
The custom weights and balance dialog that they have shows that I can carry, if I am reading this correctly, up to 410 pounds of cargo (with a 180 pound pilot) and fuel for 2h 40 m before I run into limitations.
The X-Plane weights and balance dialog seems to indicate that I can carry more?
My second option is the JustFlight Piper PA28 Turbo Arrow…
The custom weights and balance dialog that they have shows that I can carry, if I am reading this correctly, up to 620 pounds of cargo (with a 180 pound pilot) and fuel for 2h 40 m before I run into limitations.
And the X-Plane dialog…
Which, I think, gives the edge to the Piper both in cargo capacity and speed.
Am I reading this correctly?
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This is going to make me crawl out of my DCS cave. My X-plane install is sooo far behind it’ll take a couple of days to get it current.
[Edit] E-gads! 1.1 Gig d/l! I have 3.6Tb of drive space but only a 500.0kbs connection…no home improvement episode streaming for the wife four about 2 hours 
I’d need to compare exactly but I think the turbocharged Piper has a slight power advantage so it would make sense.
I need to look at my XP11 installation too and actually learn the scenery tweaking properly this time. Hopefully they’ll get out the big graphics engine update to stable by the time AH rolls out.
Future load manifest preparer for some budget cargo carriers I may or may not have flown for in the past…
I’m pretty sure I told the story about the plane my buddy was flying that had the hatch pop open and it lost boxes on the runway in Myrtle Beach. The freight terminal in Charlotte was raising hell about that until they weighed the remaining freight and found out the cargo had actually gained weight on the flight to Charlotte despite having left a bunch of boxes scattered along the runway in Myrtle Beach… 
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Probably. The Flight Time Normal Cruise box down there in the lower right of the X-Plane W&B&Fuel menu is sometimes not correct. I don’t know where it pulls its data (must be from the airplane reference files)…but it isn’t always correct.
And…of course…you can tailor your remaining fuel requirement to your…uh…requirements. VFR? IFR? How far is your alternate? Are you going to fly at normal cruise (I think the regs generally consider this to be THE number you should use for legal purposes) or high speed cruise or economy cruise?
I’m an old, no longer bold pilot for the most part. I never use minimum required legal fuel…I’m always pretty fat on gas. I have less grey hairs than a lot of my coworkers.
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Oh…and one more thing that you have probably considered - there usually is a structural limit for the load the airplane can actually carry in the passenger/cargo areas. So just because you decide not to take 300 pounds of fuel, doesn’t necessarily mean you can put another 300 pounds of freight onboard if you end up exceeding the maximum load bearing capacity of the cargo area, or if you exceed the maximum useful load or zero-fuel weight…
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That doesn’t mean your MSC virtual pilot couldn’t be bold, though! 
I wish the JF Piper Turbo Arrow had a version with the back seats removed and the back stuffed with boxes and webbing, that would be cool.
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Ok, X-Plane updated. Ready to fly the Mudspike friendly skies.
AND! Vulkan Beta installed. Using VR and, Wow! Second time I’ve said that in the last couple of years.
Vulkan made a noticeable difference. My system specs at the bottom…
Tried two scenarios:
Conditions:
Overcast wx for all, time was late afternoon and dusk.
Aircraft/Location:
- C172 at Valdez, AK
- C90 at KPHX. Note the airport had a lot of parked planes and cars on the highway; I don’t know if that’s ‘normal’ or not; couldn’t find a way to turn it off if so.
The 2nd scenario is the only one I’ll mention as the Skyhawk was always at least as good.
Before Vulkan it was not really usable at KPHX. With graphics turned down (mostly Medium settings, low on the aliasing) it was just “ok”. Where I noticed it at first was looking to my left while at low altitude; it was workable but not smooth.
After Vulkan, looking out the driver’s side window showed ‘stuff’ going by much smoother; no noticeable ‘choppiness’ (note: it wasn’t horrible in the first test, just noticeable).
As far as FPS goes, It went from about 27-33 to 40-ish. But it was a smooth 40-ish. Maybe a touch more. Again, at KPHX, at dusk. FPS was hard to get a good value on; VR doesn’t show it (I don’t know how to do it) so I just peeked under the hood to look at the values on the small window it was repeating on, on the deskstop. Whatever it was under Vulkan it simply felt much smoother.
I know the C90 isn’t the most complex one to test so YMMV. KPHX (and just flying around the Valley of the Sun in general) was always a medium-high stress test in my experience.
My System:
- i7 6800K at 4.4 GHZ!
- 32Gb sys memory (I think its speed is 2700, maybe 3000?)
- nVidia 1080 (NOT a Ti, the plain-Jane one) with 8Gb VRam.
- Running on a HDD, not SSD
- Odyssey Plus VR.
Stayed up way too late getting this all done …
PS: I tried VR in XP (and P3D) about 18 months ago (same system) and it was ugly. Quit after the first try. Been in DCS ever since. I was impressed with it on this go, as defined above.
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Looks at his system clock…uh…2:26AM…yeah…I feel ya. That Vulkan performance bump is legit. I’m loving it.
Yeah, I’m typing this while waiting for my Virpil order to go through. Man!, never had such a hard time giving someone my $. Still spinning. Bout to give up.
Yup, there it is. Timed out, again. Now “out of stock”. This is crazy. G’Nite
AH2XP Aircraft Evaluation #02 - Aviat A-1C Husky
- Aviat A-1C Husky (STMA)
- MTOW - 2,100 lbs.
- Cruise - 140 mph (I was getting closer to 125 mph)
- 2 hour fuel burn - 8 gph x 2 hr = 16 gal = 96 lbs.
MTOW = 2,100 lbs.
EMPTY = 1,380 lbs.
230 lbs. pilot
96 lbs. fuel (2 hours)
394 lbs. cargo
Shade Tree Micro Aviation (STMA) planes have long been in my virtual hangar. Straightforward, quick gauge update rates, and an excellent auto-updater, they aren’t necessarily the glossiest looking planes in X-Plane, but I really like their feel and moxie. I’ve been flying their A-1 Husky and J-3 Cub variants since X-plane 9 and have enjoyed watching them continue development.
The A-1C Husky might not be an ideal cargo hauler from the standpoint of pure lifting power, but it has excellent bush plane characteristics that make it an attractive candidate as an AH2XP beginner airplane.
After deducting for my fat frame and two hours of fuel we come up with only about 394 pounds of available cargo space.
The one nice thing about the A-1C is it is very nimble and you can put it anywhere you want on the ground…
The panel is a bit of an improvement over more 2D-ish looking STMA panels from the past. While it isn’t Carenado quality artwork, it is very good, functional, and very framerate friendly even in VR. The digital panel has a nice engine and systems cluster, an old school friendly 6-pack of instruments, the stock Garmin 430, and a nice layout of annunciators and controls.
Full power and we are off…the A-1B manual makes the following recommendations that hold true for the -1C, although climbout speed is slightly greater at 74 mph, but still with the 30 degrees of flaps…
Even at MTOW - she gets light fast and you can hear the stall warning blipping on as you get light on the big tundra tires. She breaks free at around 550’ of uphill distance…
The cockpit is really nice in VR…again, not flashy artwork, but very functional and speedy. The plane is very responsive to rudder and loves to be “flown” and is a joy to forward-slip and side-slip to provide for a good view of the runway. Winds were calm on this test flight, but a bit of left rudder and right aileron gives a nice view out the right side of the windscreen…
Flaps 30 or 40 works for landing and with quick throttle response it is easy to keep the plane right where you want…a firm landing, heavy braking and we end up using around 550’ of runway…nice!
View in VR…
Another nice feature, and one that should factor into AH2XP airframe choices, is the availability of an autopilot. STMA coded a really cool and functional Trio Pro Autopilot that is compact, yet completely functional for all the autopilot needs you might have…
And the last awesome feature - that I didn’t discover until I was doing some reading up on the STMA website, is that you can easily activate the GTN 750 if you own the RXP GTN 750 simply by selecting the 2D unit on, and it automatically replaces the GPS unit in the 3D panel with the GTN 750. Very nice! No editing, no hunting for files or user mods…
The STMA A-1C will be high on the list of probably first planes. I’m not sure what the purchase price will be in Air Hauler, but hopefully it will be in the budget once the default plane is sold.
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Thx for the heads up on the nice scenery Chris.
I went there for some quick and dirty test. I am not much interested in the low and slow haulers like 172s etc.
So tried something else. I mean I like to use the full length of runway 
First take off and landing were not documented for obvious reasons. I have very little time in XP in this plane. I even didn’t know if the plane can manage such short and rough field.
Second attempt went much better. My setup was - 1 pilot, 3hours of fuel and the rest, up to MTOW, was cargo.
Take off…
…and landing
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Nice job…! Beautiful plane… 
I do wish that X-Plane had collision logic for trees and stuff…it would make the whole sim a bit more entertaining…
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