The Seagull flies again...

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

My first endeavour Torpedo Air Cargo was running well until AH decided to generate 6 faults in 8 flights, costing me 30K nullifying almost 3 days of flying. On top of that my two freshly hired Artificial Stupidity pilots managed to wreck my hard earned reputation in just two nights, so I concluded that either my company was doomed or the db was corrupted, so with a heavy heart I decided to close shop before things would go out of hand even worse.

 

But fear not, my friend. Daddy's son hasn't yet scratched the aviation itch, so I looked around for a way to start over. With 100K "salvaged" from TCA it was back to square one, when Brunhilda, the enourmous office bunny (or how is that grey animal with the trunk spelt?), found an article dealing with the aftermath of the OLT bancrupcy.  

 

OLT (Ostfriesische Lufttransport - East Frisian Air Transport) founded in 1954 was one of the best regional carriers in northern Germany. Unfortunately back in 2010 they bit off more than they could chew and grew themselves to death. Believing that the vultures had mostly devoured the carcass already, I nontheless went to Bremerhaven and lo and behold - one of their C172's, which were mainly used for sight seeing flights and short haul mail flights to the Frisian Islands was still sitting on the ramp - well not any longer 

 

 

 

Due to legal reasons I could not retain the old company name, so I renamed it to Ostdeutsche Lufttransport GmbH (East German Air Transport Ltd.) and set up shop at the small city airport of Magdeburg. It is located bang smack in the middle of Germanyland halfway between Hannover and Berlin. Although its runway at 3200ft is a tad on the short side, it should service smaller aircraft and perhaps a Dash-7 in the future just well and for bigger metal there is the former military airfield Magedburg/Cochstedt Intl. only 15nm south. 

 

Things started really well. While Brunhilda is unlikely to stir much envy in the likes of Kiera Knightley, she's a real pro when it comes to planning flights. 

 

Just a few of her routes: 

- two loads to Bautzen and two return (90nm)

- one load to Berlin-Schönefeld and two return (77nm)

 

You get the drift. Of 25 flights until today only two were positioning flights  So I started this morning knowing that this mission would likely be the last one for me on the C172. It started with a 145nm outbound flight carrying mail to the seaside resort Barth. A positioning flight to Lübeck followed, where I took on a delivery of Magazines for Magdeburg, followed by a flight to Hannover for a batch of DVD players and then a flight to Magdeburg, where I finished the two jobs. 

 

Landing back at OLT central, I saw that a care package from the Isle Of Wight had arrived 

 

 

OH.MY.GOSH!!

That's a sweet plane. At 10.000 lbs MTOW it is flyable with a relatively low rank and at a useful load of 3.200lbs it can carry almost as much as a Beech 1900C freighter. And the sound track of the thing   

So now, the seagull on the tail is back in the skies and life is good on the line 

 

[allardjd 1,853]

Artificial Stupidity pilots

 

^{I'm impressed - you're picking up on the nuances of AH really quickly.}

 

...or how is that grey animal with the trunk spelt?

 

^{A mouse leaving on a round-the-world cruise?}

 

Of 25 flights until today only two were positioning flights.

 

^{Way to go.  Ferrying a cabin full of air doesn't bring in much revenue.}

 

^{Where did you get the Trislander?  Freeware?}

 

^John

 

 

 

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

Their are two freeware trislanders on the interwebs.

 

One is from http://www.premaircraft.com'>Premiere Aircraft Design and one from http://www.m-r-software.de'>M.R. Software. The PAD design has the better flight dynamics, while the MR one has the real engine sounds, so I usually take the PAD and merge it with the engine sounds of the MR design

 

[brett 2,289]

Well, you got to know when to hold'em and when to fold'em.   Sorry to hear about the old company but yet you persevere. Good luck with the new one, may it prosper.   

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

Good luck with the new one, may it prosper.   

 

Oh, prosper it does, my friend 

After paying the 112K deposit for the Joey I was -6.000 in the bank. Brunhilda, god bless her ernormous heart, came up with a routing from heaven: 3 loads that I could fly in one go to Nuremburg, where I picked up a job back to Magdeburg. From Nuremburg I flew 30 nm north to Bayreuth, where another load for the home base was waiting and then I picked up a third load at Hof/Plauen just 19nm north of Bayreuth. 

In a five hour mission, I completed 6 jobs (+3 rep) and went from -6.000 to 27.000 in the bank. My banker has taken to sending me randy emails...

[brett 2,289]

Ka-Ching

[Tecaty Express 0]

Awesome work. 

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

There was much rejoycing in the OLT camp today as the plucky little company celebrated another milestone. After finishing the 40th successfull mission, the Naked Greed Bank offered to launder ... erm ... lend us some monies. And after a refreshing infusion of Euro's, the turboprop era began.

We plan to buy four of these babies, contracting each to one of the big players - DHL, FedEx, UPS and TNT. Running them in company colours was debated, but we decided against it as they carry only 1.000lbs more than the Joey. For orders in the 3.000lbs range, we'll continue to use the trusty old bird whacker.

A fith plane - an ex-Arkia Dash7-100 is currently being painted in company colors and will be stationed at the home base at Magdeburg. For the DHL contract we opened a secondary base at Leipzig-Halle airport, which as visible above is a DHL hub.

The first mission were two deliveries to Berlin-Schönefeld. Two more non-DHL deliveries to the same airport were waiting back at OLT central at Magdeburg, so I sailed the bird into the home base. Setting down a well-ladden 1900C on a 3.000ft runway is quite an experience, but 4 orders worth 50 grand overall, completed in a single mission, are sure worth the hassle.

Life is good on the line

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

Another raucious celebration was had at the OLT camp today. With the flight from Magdeburg to Hohn Airforce Base the boss (that'd be me) completed his 50th delivery in the FedEx Feeder Beech 1900C D-CLOT. To celebrate the new milestone, Brunhilda decided to do a table dance. The splintered remains of the table were later buried with military honours.

 

 

 

D-CLOT. the latest addition to the OLT fleet had arrived the day before together with the first two flying employees of the company - Mia and Laura. Laura is a very experienced driver whom you'd expect behind the wheel of a large jet, but since we don't have any 747's to choose from, she'll drive D-CULT, the DHL Beech operating out of Leipzig/Halle, while Mia, a relatively modestly experienced fATPL will operate the Trislander D-DULL out of Magdeburg.

The FedEx Beech is planned to be stationed at Cologne-Bonn Airport, but we won't open the Base there until the thrid Beech D-CALM (contracted to UPS) will arrive. It will also be based at Cologne. 

 

 

D-CLOT, at the hands of the CEO, performs a veritable dive bombing into Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport.

[allardjd 1,853]

D-PLOT thickens, I see...

 

Keep 'em flying.

[brett 2,289]

.......and another AirHauler addict is born.

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

I'm not so sure how long I'll keep motivation up for a screw-job like this. Two days ago two of my employees failed one job each instantly nullifying 6 of my successful missions reputatipon-wise. Since they ended up where they should have, it wasn't a case of 'not unloading'. Today I ran a grueling 9h schedule to claw back the lost rep-points and suddenly 4 jobs of my employeees are late again. They were all assigned today at 0900, with not job being assigned if it didn't have 24hours left at least, so it is physically impossible for a job to be late for the next 16 hours, yet 4 of them are already.

What does that tell us? Very simple. AH shortens jobs after accepting them in an attempt to forcibly screw you over. I'll debug the shit out of the thing tonight and if my suspicion proves true, that was it for me... I just don't like being screwed up the rear end.

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

It's all academic though as Karim and I are shipping out to Turkey tonight. We hope to make it past the Syrian-Turkish border to join the rebels i their fight to end this atrocious genocide and the bloodthirsty regime

[allardjd 1,853]

Are you sure you have the latest version of AH?

 

John

[brett 2,289]

It's all academic though as Karim and I are shipping out to Turkey tonight. We hope to make it past the Syrian-Turkish border to join the rebels i their fight to end this atrocious genocide and the bloodthirsty regime

 

Be safe

 

Start drug testing on your pilots and install hidden security cameras in your aircraft. Something is going on.

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

Came back late saturday with unfinished business  The Turkish have the borders sealed for EU citizens. Karim stayed down there trying to organize a route via Jordan or Iraq, so I had to return for the time being. 
 
Anyways, this gave me time to bust out the debugger and give AH the ol' once-over. My theory that it shortens jobs arbitrarily was wrong, but I found the reason for the mysteriously shortening jobs and the result is cringe-worthy.
 
I think it was QM, who noticed several weeks ago that the last column in the balance sheet doesn't update, if you change the sorting. Well, the orders list does the same.

 

What I did was sorting the list of available orders by destination, so I could easily find double or triple headers. and assigned 5-8 flight routings to my meanwhile 5 AI pilots. What happened was, that when I sorted by destination, AH scrambled the 'remaining time' column, so while I assigned flights that had allegedly more than 24 hours left, I was assigning jobs as third or fourth flight in the routing that would expire in less than 6 hours, because the time I was seeing belonged to a completely different job. 

 

I checked - I have the current version of AH, so this error is contained in all versions out there. Not counting the fact that such an amateurish mistake is completely unacceptable for a commercial software, it is also a hugely demotivating thing as it wrecked two weeks of  work. Just as my last company, this one was wrecked in a single night. When I looked back on sunday, overall 12 jobs had failed sending my rep back from 62 to 50 

 

So, a good tip for people, who use AI pilots: Export your orders list to Excel or another spreadsheet and do the planning there and when accepting non-trivial routings for AI's double check the expiry times. 

 

I'm not sure yet if I re-find the motivation to rebuild this company or restart for a second time. But if I should get a visum for Jordan anytime soon, this question won't be very pressing anyways.

[Bobby 0]

I really enjoyed that screen shot of the FedEx doing the  "dive bombing into Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport"

 

Reminded me of my first jump seat with FedEx. Back in the old days, before 9/11, they let us ride in the seat behind the pilot. Anyhow, we are cruising at altitude and he reaches over, pulls the spoilers, and literally dives into Memphis. I swear I couldn't see the sky through the windshield. Scared the crap out of me. Evidently FedEx doesn't make any money having the fleet line up for nice and long approaches. Now I know why they like to hire ex-military....preferably fighter pilots

 

Anyway, very cool screen shots

 

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

Visum for Jordan came in today. I'll be off tomorrow. Unfortunately Americaland can't be arsed to end the genocide in Syria - probably to few oil to warrant the effort. Unlike Obama I won't sit on my fat arse watching Assad slaughter his own people. Time to fight the bastard. See ya, folks.

[allardjd 1,853]

  Unfortunately Americaland can't be arsed to end the genocide in Syria - probably to few oil to warrant the effort.

 

Like all the oil in Afghanistan? 

 

John

[brett 2,289]

Well don't dawdle there Danilo, kill all the sons-a-bitches, let God sort them out and then get back safe. Just watch out for the Americans that we say are not there.   

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

I'm back in ze Fatherland. Took some shrapnell in the right arm, when we were gunned down by two helicoper gunships of the Assad troops near Dara'a, but the main objective was reached. We established contacts to activists in Turkey, Iraq and Syria and are currently organizing a supply convoy with medical supplies and anti-.gas measures (masks and decontamination supplies). I'll be back down in Syria in two weeks time - this time behind the wheel of a supply truck.

[brett 2,289]

Bummer, now you might set off the security scanners.  Get well 

[Torpedo Air Cargo 0]

Bummer, now you might set off the security scanners.  Get well 

 

Nope, no metal left in the body The twisted irony is that since I grabbed a gun and shot back and therefore the arm was away from the body the shrapnel sliced through the arm and that was that. Had the arm been closer to the body I'd have taken a body hit. Anyways, we completed the first medical supply convoy on the last weekend in May. First time ever I ever drove a truck for three days flat - quite an exhausting experience.