ehunyadi

These are all great posts and I've taken many of the tips here (and my bank account is not happy with me!!!). Thanks everyone!

Yeah, that's the big dilemma right now: sell a plane to get a new one and go about $100k in the hole, wait until I can lease a plane, or wait until I can get a loan. Therein lies the beauty of AH; you have real-life decisions to make, and your success as a pilot directly relates to the success of the company. I think I will probably go in the hole to get the 185F. I think the bigger hauls will more than make up for it. Then again, I can lease one soon as my reputation is rising. Decisions, decisions!!

The Cessna 185QF can carry a whopping 1360 lbs of cargo for the discount price (NEW!) of $255,652.00. It's a tail-dragger, but I can get used to that (again). My question is this: I have $25,166 in stocks (actually made money on the stock market!) and $36,933 in cash with a net worth of $204,538. If I sell my C172 ($100k), sell my stocks ($25k) and make a little more cash, will AH allow me to go in the hole to get a new plane? I don't have the reputation for a loan or a lease (thank you, haggis) so if I'm going to do this, I have to do it as a purchase. Then, with the larger capacity of the

I am super-jealous of that luscious and spacious aircraft! That's why SoCalExpress is part green: envious of Saint-Pierre Cargo!

Absolutely! This last ad agency took me for $25k!!! They said they did all kinds of other successful campaigns. Then I found out the last ad campaign they did was for ham-flavored soda. I checked on Google; the campaign wasn't so successful after all. Big surprise. lol

Wow... I just looked through these Mustangs and the Rammer Jammer photos took my breath away. You are an amazing artist with those textures!!!

This was a great read, and a great pictorial!!! I was laughing out loud for some of the captions!

Very cool! My former hometown's local airport started this way (as a grass field) and is now an international airport with a terminal and a tower! I used to wash airplanes for free rides when I was a teenager and I remember bumping along the runway in old Aeronca's and Citabrias (and even a Long-EZ). Good memories. It's cool that you have this VERY LOCAL field. The field closest to my home is KDWH. It's the largest private field in the US, allegedly.

The marketing company we hired came back with our first ad. I think I want our money back.

Awesome! Good luck! KEMT in SoCal is a GREAT place to start; lots of jobs and lots of airports in close proximity. If you have your settings right, you can really get lots of jobs done quickly (although ATC will do their best to make you "pay" lol).

Short update this time: we flew another six hauls today and finished up at our old home, Palomar. We decided to spend the night in Palomar and continue in the morning with the last flight on the agenda considering the late hour. Kenny tied the plane down while I chatted with the cargo boys about bringing the cargo back out in the morning to load up. They weren't very happy about it, but they understood; better to have a rested pilot flying your cosmetics than a tired one. Mountains and terrain don't need makeup. Besides, we had 44 hours left before it was needed for a fashion show in San Diego

One big reason I can't wait to get a bigger/faster plane: ATC keeps putting me WAY OUT for approaches. For whatever reason, ATC (Radio Contact) doesn't recognize I'm a small plane and puts me out on these 20 mile approaches. Normally that wouldn't be a bad thing except for those times when I'm doing a 17 mile flight and my approach vectors are longer than the distance between the airports I'm supposed to be flying between. When I came into El Monte from Borrego, I had to fly all the way down to the ocean (nearly to Long Beach!!!) to start my visual approach. Wow. So, if there were ever a need

Wow... very cool plane. I had to do a little research and found out it was notorious for a number of reasons, namely that 39 of the 79 aircraft built were lost due to accidents and that it held the notorious statistic of requiring 1,000 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight. It does look a lot like the Harrier. I wonder how much of the Scimitar was the inspiration for the Harrier's airframe.

Very cool! Well done!

That was simply stunning! Very good job on that; VERY impressive!!!

Overnight in Gillespie. We didn't really count on staying down South for the night, but sometimes, it is what it is. After a short cab ride from the pilot's lounge to a La Quinta, Kenny (my co-pilot on this trip) and I decided to hit the bar and play some pool. I forgot he's such a pool shark; I lost all but one game (and I only won that one because he scratched!), but it was a good time. Then, we went to our rooms and hit the sack. I put the "Do Not Disturb" sign out on my door so that I could sleep in. Most of our trips are at night and I didn't want to be shorted my 8 hours minimum. After

Thanks!

Picked the wrong job to do first... and got a "failure" on a haul today. Haggis. Bloody haggis. Who in the heck in SoCal wants over 500lbs of haggis? Apparently someone at Gillespie, and when it came in a little late, they cried and only paid half of the agreed upon price. Now, I could have done the haggis flight before another haul, but it was a little more out of the way and I didn't realize it was due so soon. Only when I got on the ground to refuel after dropping off some cargo at another airport (Ramona) was I told by our ramp person that we were going to be late with the haggis delivery.

I'd love to... if only I knew how!

So, as I am flying to KEMT from KSMX, I encountered a C208B flying below me and in the opposite direction. A few minutes later, I found myself browsing the radar of AH and noticed another pilot flying a C208B in the opposite direction that looked like he just passed me. Was this the same plane? Does AH really keep up with other pilots in AH and update them in a sort of multi-player mode, or was this just an amazing coincidence?

The first few flights were pretty nice. Sure, the weather is active, but that just makes for better skills tests. One of those skills tested today was learning to use the glass cockpit in the C172. I figured that since we're starting "new," we may as well start with a "new" plane. So, we traded the old and busted avionics (the old trusty stuff I'm used to) and got this new-fangled glass stuff. It's funny; I can see why it's the new hotness, but it takes some getting used to. One thing I didn't realize until after two legs of todays missions were complete was that the glass instrument's altimet

Today marks the beginning of a new cargo carrier in Southern California. SoCal Express Cargo Services (and Patio) flew its first flight from its home at El Monte (KEMT) to the little-known (and prior to this flight, unknown to SCECS Chief Pilot) Shafter-Minter Field (KMIT) carrying a heavy load of automotive parts to an auto racing team that needed their parts ASAP. The CEO and Chief Pilot, E.J. Hunyadi, who last flew for SlikAir Cargo, recently recovered from life-threatening injuries sustained in a mishap in the Angeles National Forest flying for his former company. When asked, CEO E.J. Hu

Yes; I checked that. I thought the same thing after my first "yo," but by the fifth or sixth "yo," I figured that it was ATC having fun watching me go up and down. Weather in Southern California has been really bad this past week (which means a lot of fun to fly in for me!) and I thought that the altimeter was set wrong or that the weather was changing, but the whole yoyo thing kind of threw that out. It hasn't happened to me since; I guess it was just a weird night.

There is, but AH does not penalize for use of accelerated time. You can also have a good time (or a bad time) with hired AI pilots, letting them do most of the heavy lifting. John I officially hate FSX ATC now. I specifically made a flightplan to go AROUND the Angeles National Forest to avoid the twin peaks and guess what they had me do? Try to fly over them AGAIN. This time, I almost made it. ALMOST. Just as we passed the peak, the plane stalled. Since we had less than 500' clearance to the mountain, and the plane was VERY heave (took off at MTOW), I was unable to recover the aircraft.

LOL! I am hoping just the legal stuff. The flight didn't originate South of the border, so I think it was legit. Now that you mention it, it did kind of smell funny...