Edit: Apologies, I just noticed that there is a VA diaries sub forum so I have moved it to there, sorry.
I thought I would start a thread for people to post about their adventures and any tips for those exploring the world with our VA.
I had an amazing flight this evening from the VA home base in KEAT to a tiny little strip, W58 in the district of Battle Ground, Clark County, Washington.
The IFR flight at 12,000 ft took me through broken cloud past Mt Rainer. Such stunning scenery in the area!
I flew max weight of 3000lbs with enough fuel for 20 mins of reserve and I am so glad I had it with me!! Finding an airstrip within an urban area is almost impossible without GPS or a detailed local map. I circled several times before finally finding it and had to go around 3 times because of winds.
Had a great flight back from the Seattle area (S50/Auburn) back across the mountains to Wenatchee (KEAT). Love the cloud layers and mountains. Having flown the P3D version of Air Hauler quite a bit, I just think the X-Plane scenery, lighting, aircraft handling…everything is better. I know it is only my opinion on it…but yeah…
I thought I’d risk a blue screen to get a couple of types under my belt and start making money for the VA. I transferred a cargo job to MAD worth $56k and flew it from Grant Co. to lovely Friday Harbor. When I landed the AH2 map still showed me in Grant Co. So, yeah. It was a spectacular flight but for nothing. I’ll try again in the a.m.
LOL…you are having a time of it. Did you get any of the chimes and messages from Air Hauler after starting up and starting to taxi? You should be getting messages at the beginning and end of your trips.
Passing over 27W right now… Lake Wenatchee State airport. Looks gorgeous down there. Try to remember these views when the PNW socks in for a month with 200 overcast and a mile and rain… Ya’ll be wishing we opened our VA in Arizona instead…
I had a little Wikipedia rabbit hole journey of Washington to learn a little bit more about our virtual stomping grounds…and the weather and the geography are fascinating. I might try to put some notes in the WX section.
At a first glance, it certainly looks like we’ve picked the right time of the year to learn our way around the area! It also appears that our home base is handily in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range…and the Columbia river must be one of the best balls of thread Theseus ever saw.
Yeah…it should be interesting in our little piston planes later in the year. Those icing levels will come down and we will be squashed between picking up ice and very high terrain.
Here are my pics from my KEAT to W58 adventure as mentioned in the first post. It was certainly worrying not being able to find the airstrip. The clouds came in half way across the mountains and I descended through a cloud layer to be greeted by a totally different landscape than the one I had just left.
I LOVE the Comanche! That and the Globe Swift are the only GA point-to-point planes I covet. For my part no screenshots yet. I took them but I took them in VR and didn’t realize that the GNS-530 was blocking the shot in the 2D screen. The flight was a $56k load of memory sticks (some irony there but I won’t try to explain) from my base at Moses to Friday Harbor but I flew the trip for MAD to put some cash in the kitty. I got all the right messages but no cash and started to panic as this was my second attempt at the flight. Then AH2 crashed! Two minutes after I logged back on I got a text saying that I had $42,114 ready for withdrawal from MAD. Yes! There was some panic but I got my cash and had a lovely flight. Now I just need to find a job that gets my DC-3 back in the general direction of Moses.
That is one hell of a find! I am stuck in Friday Harbor. Unfortunately there is no commodities market here. But since it is kinda on the way, I think I will hop over to Seattle and see if anything is cooking there. Appreciate the tip! At this rate the C-47 will be paid off in a month or two.
Ya I was trying to do that as well, though I have far less cash to spend haha. Small strips tend not to have much in the way of commodity markets though.
Ditto. I’m a big Comanche fan as well. Nice choice @Tigerwulf.
It was a beautiful day this morning on my way from Tacoma to Burlington (KTCM > KBVS). Using Active Sky XP with default textures, there was a fair amount of haze. Going to try xEnviro later today, even though he has released an 11.41 compatible version yet
All the failures remind me of the learning process we went through when we first started our business. I hope once you get things ironed out you will want to stay the course and get your VA’s in the black instead of starting over.
