172 is at U63 in Idaho. I don’t have time to fly it back.
I’ve transferred a job from there back in the direction of KPUW though for anyone who wants to take it. Please feel free!
Hairy getting U63… Pilot2ATC damn near guided me into the mountains Good thing the clouds broke, because “maintain 8000” was NOT a good idea. Once we popped the gusts in the hills though, it was a smooth direct in. Best landing yet actually!
Apparently some random dudes up here in this mountain refuge have a ton of auto parts to ship… that’s the job that’s in the va list waiting for you guys XD haha
Hairy getting OUT with 700 lbs. of auto parts in that Bush 172! I leaned it out as well as I could and picked a runway direction that seemed appropriate with a better slope, but I think I misjudged it and took off toward the higher terrain. That Bush 172 could barely climb at that weight and altitude. I had to do a quick “on the AOA limit” 180 due to the rising terrain and just scrapped over the trees to get back over the airfield and climb to the more moderate terrain to the west…whew! I was sweating it…!
It seems I might have forgotten how to do a job for a VA in my own plane. I took a personal cargo run to Grand Fork, Canada. Once there I found 14000lbs of flowers that needed to go to a strip near Wenatchee. I handed the job over to MAD. But today when I tried to fly the job for the us it said that either there was no plane at Grand Fork or that I was not typed in any plane available. I’ve done this a handful of times for the VA so I am not sure what is different this time. Anyway, I learned from the “shrimp experience” not to cancel a VA job. So instead I just loaded the cargo without accepting anything and am making my way to their intended destination. The question will be whether any of us get paid for the trip.
Ya it wasn’t letting me fly my 172 for the VA job either last night. The UI…
As for your departure @BeachAV8R looks like you took off 05? I think the airport notes indicate 23 is preferred unless weather is prohibitive. 05 encouraged for arrivals. I had to land 23 because the wind was pure tailwind for 05. That 172 does not like to climb. P2atc whined at me half my flight to expedite climb…meanwhile I’m hovering just above stall to maintain 200ft/min climb lol.
Yeah, it was a mistake to not read the airport notes. I saw the open area all around and figured I’d be OK, but forgot the 172 Bush at gross weight performs nothing like the Husky. The 172 Bush requires you to lean it out properly, and taxi to the very edge of the runway at some of these high altitude airports.
I always have to puzzle my way through the UI for AH. For instance, I picked up a trip out of an airport that me and the plane were not currently at (just 5 miles away). I sent the trip to the VA and then went to go fly it and it said the same thing…no plane at that destination. So I had to check the plane out and fly it as an individual to the origin point of the VA trip. I’m getting better at navigating the UI…but sometimes I get lost in the sub-menus…
So I’m looking at the VA (MAD) company details…and it somehow shows:
Overall Reputation - 63
Cargo Reputation - 80
Passenger Reputation - 53
Cargo Jobs Completed - 39
Passenger Jobs Completed - 3
So I’m surprised that Overall Reputation is already up around 63…but whatever. But if I go into the VA Fleet menu, and hit the Lease Aircraft menu at the top - it says:
So I can’t figure out why the company statistics are so high, but the lease aircraft function is not selectable…
I’d be interested to see if an individually owned plane can be leased to the VA at some point down the road.
Anyway - what that means is that we will have to simply make the money to eventually buy a bigger plane (bigger than the TBM). I’m generally focusing on getting my individual company (MAC) REP up to 40 so I can lease a slightly bigger plane, and I’ll shed some of that profit to the VA as well.
I am sure Slopey has given the game aspect of AH a lot of thought. Maybe he sees some avenues for cheating that VA allows for and that are not so clear to us. But really Air Hauler exists to encourage players to fly to new places. It isn’t really a competitive multiplayer game. There should be some flexibility. Right now if I go to the marketplace there is no way for me to sub-lease my DC-3 to either the VA or to another player. There should be! That’s how airlines work. The most lucrative part of the industry is aircraft leasing. This is where FSEconomy shows a little sophistication that AH2 could learn from.
Nah that’s what I’ve been guessing. It’s essentially useless lol. Unless your rep affects value of cargoes offered maybe. I dunno. But then that’s all determines by personal companies anyway. The VA just seems like an extremely superficial shell imo.
Well, I can see the power of distributed revenue generation (I just made up that financial term @Bearhedge - ) I mean, I’m sure there are VAs that are more like Virtual Squadrons that have pay ratios more like 10% to the pilot 90% to the VA. With 20 or 40 pilots you could rapidly build up enough cash to eventually buy larger aircraft faster…so maybe it would be a faster way to a 727 or 767 or something.
I still like the concept and enjoy doing a trip here and there for the VA…and I plan to increase trips once my REP race is done for MAC.
Yeah, I feel like this should have been fleshed out a long time ago. I am brand new to AH (and FSE) and am totally hooked. But this should also mean that whatever bothers me, must have been bothering other users for years. I would not have bought AH were it not for the promise of M.A.D. I imagined that our combined power would give us a network of missions that we could fly to our hearts content. It just so happens that this is precisely my experience with S.H.I.T. (my legitimate company name; no snickering). But in order to do anything with the VA, other than to donate my profits to it, I really need to jump through a bunch of hoops. It’s still fun. But it seems unnecessarily soul-sucking.
OK - I just transferred $50,000 back to the VA (MAD). The current balance I’m showing is $384,534. I borrowed $50,000 last week in order to afford buying 435 lbs. of Fine China ($85,000) - I only netted about $4,000 out of that and only did it because I was flying a leg between major airports that didn’t have a cargo run available. Anyway - I transferred 50K out of the VA, made the run, and now the 50K is back in the VA. Actually, I think I’ll make it 51K since I should pay a fee on that borrowing.
The point being - if you need to borrow money from the VA (I think you are all given permissions to do so) - feel free to do that if you need to buy commodities as long as you repay the loan back to the VA in relatively short order.
One quick question - I’m pretty in the dark about Factories and Construction - should our bases be making stuff? Not that I have room in my current plane for extra stuff…
I’m not sure how that really works either. It seems that factories take tier one items and turn them into tier two or three. But only T1 items are bought and sold at commodity markets so what do you do with the T2/T3 items?
I have seen a mission that was requesting a T2 item but it seems a little silly to pay to build and took a factory just for one mission.
On a different note, it is frustrating to me that there’s a lack of VA cargo job generation. I’m opening a base in my offline save at KEAT just so I can generate jobs to transfer to the VA.
Good thing the clouds broke, because “maintain 8000” was NOT a good idea. Once we popped the gusts in the hills though, it was a smooth direct in. Best landing yet actually!
) I mean, I’m sure there are VAs that are more like Virtual Squadrons that have pay ratios more like 10% to the pilot 90% to the VA. With 20 or 40 pilots you could rapidly build up enough cash to eventually buy larger aircraft faster…so maybe it would be a faster way to a 727 or 767 or something.