I’m sorry Destiny and Danganistan…we can’t take Christmas Day off. You can take your family with you on your travels though and we will give a Christmas bonus…
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When you only get a couple hours of sleep and decide to do a quick dispatching job…you end up sending your C212 all the way across the country on accident…sorry Destiny!
She gonna need the Lady J…
I think thats the selling point! 
Not to drift (hee, hee) but, I’m looking forward to the day I get a system that’ll run FS2020 smoothly enough in VR to run IR/VR Routes with a good LOD.
I have the coordinates of, I think, all of them in the US in a data file (I used to write some software about a decade or two ago). I doubt the coords. have changed much. Data is probably still available though my link no longer works. Just have to whip up a small program to convert/format it…
Then go “pew, pew” at the target, which will be a little anti-climatic, but, visually should be fun. Hmm, IR-176 comes to mind as a very scenic one.
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I’m waiting for MSFS to get some additional 3rd party planes…then I might “export” my Air Hauler 2 career to MSFS. I’m not sure if I can do some text editing to get my new career to approximate my X-Plane AH2 career…but hopefully I can allow some continuity. Or I might just continue with X-Plane and AH2 because I really do enjoy it…
Picture the scene as the temporary tent hangar at the MAX Factory rolls back the curtains. The smoke generators billow smoke…the lasers arc about…all of the sudden…the huge soundstage setup starts booming as the curtains start to reveal what is behind them…
Being such a huge event for the Pullman MAX Factory - we even hired Steve Ballmer to come dance to House of Pain…
And there she is - the Mudspike Air Cargo C-17 Globemaster III…
The product of months of me, Destiny, and our recent new hire Danganistan crisscrossing North America looking for C-17 parts. Parts that were - not inexpensive. But building the C-17 at the MAX Factory saved us 67% and gives us an insane load hauling capability. We will drown the Pacific Northeast in shrimp and DVDs…
Our final part in the build was found down in Miami about two weeks ago. It took nearly six days to ship it across the country at a cost of $1.1M…
Once all the parts were in Pullman (including four engines!) - building costs alone were $1.75M and would take an additional week…
Total cost for parts came in at $52M…whew…
Total cost for shipping all of the parts to Pullman from across North America came in at $2.45M giving a total cost of procurement, shipping, and construction of about $56,205,000! The cost of which was largely offset by grinding away on C212, MD80, and E135 cargo and commodity runs.
I haven’t tested the maximum gross takeoff numbers yet…but with concessions for fuel loadout in favor of cargo - it should be impressive…
This morning I took the type rating exam in the plane…$75K just for that alone!
I will pause a second to say this:
DO NOT BUY THE VIRTAVIA C-17 FOR X-PLANE 11
The developer has basically stopped updating the aircraft and the developer forum is a graveyard. Thankfully, some community members have come through with setting up some instructions on getting the plane largely functional by making some extensive changes in Plane Maker (things like engine bypass ratios, leading edge device numbers, FMC changes) - but this requires doing some editing in Plane Maker…so what I ended up is fantastic, but does require some legwork. Therefore…I would not recommend getting this plane unless you want to roll up your sleeves.
The C-17 is super-easy to operate:
- Battery switch ON
- Fuel tanks feeding
- APU ON
- APU Gen ON
- Avionics ON
- Engine start buttons pull - #1-#4
- Gens #1-#4 ON
That is pretty much it.
It isn’t the MOST useful aircraft in VR…but it is a pretty simple plane. I would love it if SimVRLabs took a look at it and made the knobs a bit more useful. They work, but they are the traditional point and move as opposed to grab and twist. I usually map the HDG and ALT bugs to my controller anyway…so from that perspective things aren’t too bad.
The biggest drawback is that the HUD is not focused at infinity - so you have to switch your focus in VR between near and far to read it. It is really just best to turn it off and fly the plane by glancing at the standard instrument panel. In 2D - the HUD is great…
Aircraft fired up and ready to start the type rating - you have to be careful taxiing the C-17 around these small airports. The narrow taxiways and objects on the ramp require some planning to navigate…
The turn radius is not the greatest either. I’m not sure what the real C-17 turn limits are on the nosewheel (in degrees), but the “hammerhead” demonstrated here is about the minimum turning radius. Differential braking does not seem to increase turn radius…
For the type ride - I went with an hour of fuel and no cargo - so performance was pretty lively, but still required quite a bit of the Pullman runway. I think I did some sort of DreamEngine sound mod if I recall…but the engines sound AWESOME in the external views with this aircraft…
Downtown Pullman probably wondering what the heck just flew over them this morning…
Climbing out - for the checkride I chose not to use autothrottle or autopilot. I do think the trim control surfaces need more tweaking in Plane Maker - rate of trim seems a bit fast, and the upper limit of the nose up trim I think needs to be adjusted upwards since I feel like I’m running out of nose up trim at slower speeds (160 knots and below). This is an empty plane though, so I will have to test the plane at higher weight and normal CG to make sure I don’t inadvertently make an adjustment that is detrimental to stability at those weights…
The Air Hauler 2 checkrides are actually a smidge stressful because they do require fairly fine aircraft control. They could be a bit harder with more tasks - basically they measure just altitude and headings commanded, but they also monitor parameters such as bank angles and stalls…so you don’t want to ham-fist the thing and cause a failure of the checkride…
Looking good in the primer paint…
One of my instructions was to climb to 11,400’ and turn to a heading of 185 degrees - which put me in the clouds. I don’t think I had put my pitot/static heats on, so was hoping I wouldn’t ice up and get a failure of the instrumentation…
Now for the landing back at Pullman - the landing is measured and if you get anything worse than an OK grade you fail. I thought this would be the most difficult part of the checkride because the C-17 is just sooooo enormous and the eye-height is really high in the flare. I pulled up the ILS to provide at least a little bit of guidance, although the ILS at Pullman has an offset localizer, so it isn’t all that helpful…
I’ll need to figure out both the flap schedule and Vref speeds…but 145 seemed to work out well…
The runway at Pullman looks pretty short (but really isn’t at 7,100’) when you are aiming for a greaser…
A butt clenching moment as the radar altimeter callouts seemed to go too fast…a slight balloon at the 10’ callout…but she settled in firmly, but not enough to do worse than an OK thankfully. I fear this plane might be hard to keep from damaging at the places I intend to take it…
Taxiing to the main ramp…passing by our old buddy in the broken down pickup truck. Hard to believe we first made our acquaintance with him back in May of 2020 with almost no money in the bank and running around in an A-1C Husky as my first plane!
On the ramp and shutdown for a successful type rating completion. Coincidentally this was my 1,000th screenshot of my Air Hauler 2 adventure… 
Company finances after so much expenditure of money and time are still surprisingly good with over $11M still in the bank. At the peak of our pre-C-17 acquisition spree we had as much as $35M in the bank…but you have to spend money to make money (isn’t that how most airlines go broke??)…
Monthly overhead is high now simply because monthly insurance on the C-17 is nearly $2M per month!! A hard landing without insurance would put us out of business…so the insurance is absolutely essential until I can build some big cash reserves with some cargo runs in her.
Well…thanks for coming along on this ridiculous post this morning. I probably enjoy Air Hauler 2 more than I should. I do have one other plane I might consider building…but that one will have to wait a bit…
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Is it FRED or is it FREDski?
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It’s a state secret.
So I was getting ready to commence testing of the C-17 and do some Plane Maker tweaking…and when I went to set up the conditions for the baseline test - discovered this was hidden at the bottom of the weight & balance menu…
Haha…how’d that 85.5 tonnes sneak past me?? 
THAT explains the 6,000’ of runway used at Pullman when I thought I was empty and only had an hour of fuel onboard.
So with that little detail discovered…glad I didn’t start digging too far into the performance until I see how the plane flies without that stuff loaded…
(@fearlessfrog - clearly the GIF toolbar was a mistake… ) (don’t disable it though) (haha…)
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Sometimes I really wonder just how much of what is going on in the world around me just passes by without me having the wherewithal to recognize it…
To wit:
…and I just discovered you can click below the HUD and have it fold down…
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Had a chance to do some testing with the C-17. I think these results could be much improved by using more engine power. The panel has some little N2 computer thingy that you can use to select Max Continuous Power, Max Power, Manual Power, and some other settings. I was using the MAX setting that looked like it was supposed to put in 1.80 EPR, but it settled out at 1.63…so I think some of these takeoff numbers are a bit higher than what they would be if I went to 1.8 or 1.9…
First test was just with an hour of fuel and 2,000 lbs. of cargo…
Normal takeoff is slats extended and FLAPS 1/2…here you can see the EPR setting thingy…
V1 and Vr for the very light weight of 300,000 lbs. is 118 / 122…
Total distance from brake release to liftoff was about 2,868’…
Coming back around for a light weight landing…
Vref for light weight is about 115…aiming for the fixed distance marker…
Down, full braking, spoilers (or lift dump or whatever they might be called) and reverse thrust brings us to a stop in a shade over 1,900’…
Now we up the payload to 200,000 lbs. or so and enough fuel to fly for over five hours…settling in at about 585,000 lbs. total (MTOW). V1/Vr at MTOW is 148 / 152…which eats up a ton of runway. Again, it could be better I think with a manual throttle setting of 1.90 EPR or so…
Eating up about 8,500’…
Barely enough runway and a delicate climb away…
Coming back around for a MTOW landing - probably not legal…I’d guess there is a max landing weight that is significantly below MTOW perhaps… Vref = 156
Landing performance is pretty good for such a heavy weight…about 3,219’…
This should be a fun “backcountry” aircraft…
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My home base where the MAX Factory is located (KPUW) is not a large airport - so it has very limited commodities. The C-17 is capable of wiping out whatever is on hand. For my first revenue flight, I coupled a contract (6,351 lbs. of machined parts) to KPDX with whatever extra commodities I could place aboard (about 12,774 lbs. of miscellaneous goods). We only used a tiny fraction of the C-17’s cargo hauling capacity…
The cost analysis - we made $153,432 on the commodities we brought with us…and were paid $25,404 for the job contract. Purchased $39,000 worth of fuel at Pullman and burned about $15,000 worth of that. Again - these are only fractional values of what the C-17 would normally generate and burn during a normal flight…
Not making any friends at the terminal in Pullman…
Caution wake turbulence??! - I AM wake turbulence!!
Light weight…so quick and safe climbout from Pullman…
Finally break out over the lower clouds into sunny skies above…FL200 for the flight over to Portland…
I’m using the pop-up GTN to use for area navigation (GPS) since the pedestal mounted FMC doesn’t seem very good. The GTN works nicely since it couples to the HSI. I will investigate whether I can jam it into the 3D panel somehow…
Flew the transitions to end up on the ILS 28L at Portland since that is the side that has the cargo terminal. Followed an Airbus four miles in trail down the whole approach…
First revenue flight landing rating was a greaser!! It helps to be light and have 11,000’ of runway to work with!
On and unloaded…I’m going to have to find a paint-shop around here to tart this baby up…
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First full up cargo flight in the C-17 - a bit over an hour hop from Portland, Oregon over to Salt Lake City, Utah. Technically not a full load because I couldn’t afford to purchase a full load of commodities. The C-17 holds so much cargo that you have to have enough company money to actually buy the amount to fill it - and I only had $15M in the bank, so could only purchase about that much in commodities.
Another gloomy morning in PDX - on the roll off 28L…
Once we cleared the area out to the southeast conditions improved with great scenery along the way…
Dialed in the ILS to 16L at SLC and we captured and rode it down…
Only an OK landing this time…anything worse I think ends up in damage…so glad I didn’t totally clank it in.
Selling my load of shoes in SLC…
Here you can see the company ledger…purchased $14,985,000 of shoes in PDX - sold them for $21,645,000 in SLC - a tidy profit. It definitely helps offset that $2M a month insurance policy on the C-17!
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Because no one ever anywhere has enough shoes…
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Imelda is our customer…!
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