allardjd 1,853 Posted June 3, 2010 Report Share Posted June 3, 2010 AirHaulers -> AirHaulics – June AirHauler Starting Modes by: John Allard Earlier this week I did a little analysis on AirHauler starting modes to respond to a posting from a user on the Just Flight/AirHauler forum. It seemed a good topic for this monthly article too, so I’ve woven that analysis in, by way of helping to explain the choices one is faced with when beginning in AirHauler. Upon entering AirHauler for the first time, the budding freight entrepreneur is faced with a series of choices that must be made before actually getting up close and personal with an airplane. Key among these is starting mode. AirHauler provides four… • Easy • Medium • Hard • Career With one notable exception, which only occurs in Career mode, these modes only vary in the initial conditions for starting the new AH company. Each has differing levels of cash, company reputation and beginning aircraft. Those things aside, all else remains the same and once begun, each company operates under exactly the same set of rules and conditions. The flying part and the business part are exactly the same for all of them – none is more difficult than the others. The Career mode exception? In Career mode, the user/pilot is subject to the same Maximum Take-Off Weight (MTOW) limits that are applied to AI pilots in AH. They are initially limited to AC with a MTOW below 10,000 lbs. In the other three modes, the user may fly any aircraft he can afford to lease or buy, right from the outset, even though AI cannot. If he chooses to begin in Career mode, he must earn his way up the aircraft weight tables by successfully completing the requisite number of freight jobs in AirHauler. That is the sole difference in Career mode – in all other respects it is identical to the Hard mode. The modes table out like this… Mode - Cash -Reputation - Aircraft Easy - $500,000 - 60% - LearJet Medium - $200,000 - 50% - Caravan Hard and Career - $100,000 - 40% - Skyhawk Startup cash is pretty obvious. That’s your AH grubstake – your operating capital. From that you must acquire your first base and, if you wish to, buy insurance for that first aircraft. Other things must be paid too as you proceed – fuel and landing fees are relatively predictable and occur for each job. Repairs are patently unpredictable – sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you. Insurance helps – careful flying helps – but there is no silver bullet. Once a new month clicks over, the base lease, insurance premiums and AI pilot salaries come due again. You need a little operating cushion until the freight revenue begins to accumulate in your bank account. Startup cash provides it. Company reputation in a simulation like this may not seem all that important on the surface. In AH, however, it serves as a trigger mechanism for some very important features. Most of the vital ones are clustered near the middle of the range. At 50%, your company is deemed by the financial institutions to be creditworthy enough to lease aircraft. The Easy and Medium mode starts are already at this point. Below that, outright purchase is the only option, making it very difficult to work your way out of that starting aircraft in Hard or Career modes until you’ve reached the 50% reputation level. When starting in those modes, some long, hard flying hours are between you and being able to lease an AC to replace the one you began with. [there is a workaround – more later] Twenty successful jobs, with none failed, will do it. Failed jobs set you back, requiring even more successful jobs to reach the all-important 50% rep. Why is leasing so vital in AH? Let’s look at an example. Say you’re ready to move to the big iron and wish to acquire a 737 for your freight company. To buy it outright will cost you a cool $40 million and change. You’ve got to haul an awful lot of cabbages to put $40 million in the bank. Leasing the 737, however, is much more affordable, with an up front lease deposit (refundable) coming in at only a tad over $5 million, plus a monthly lease payment of about $2.25 million each month thereafter. That’s still a mountain of cabbages to fly, but only an eighth of those needed to buy the Boeing out of pocket. It’s a fine old business strategy to accept some risk and acquire the asset as quickly as possible (by borrowing or leasing) and put it to work generating revenue. From that revenue the business can make the payments and hopefully turn a profit too. All of that happens far sooner than having to save up to buy the asset for cash on the barrel-head. It’s how the world works. Leasing in AH provides that option. The next reputation trigger is at 55%. At that point, you may begin to hire AI (Artificial Intelligence) pilots – those mechanized minions who will ply the skies in your stead. The Easy mode start, with 60% rep, permits this right away. At a Medium mode start or below, you’ll still have to work your way to it. At 60% reputation, the bank has now deemed you sufficiently reputable that they will trust you with some of their money in the form of bank loans. Obviously, only the Easy mode start confers that level of respectability from the outset – from the other modes, you must claw your way to this lofty status of gentility and trustworthiness. The final factor that differentiates the starting modes is that single aircraft you own free and clear, as you begin your fledgling company. As AH was under development, the specific starting AC were carefully chosen from the default AC available – default types only, the developer not wishing to confront new users with the complexities of importing add-on AC at the outset. For reasons of consistency it was necessary to consider only those default AC that were available in both FS9 and FSX. That quickly led to the C-172 Skyhawk, C-208 Caravan and the Lear 45 – name your poison. Experienced flight simmers, however, are likely to chafe if forced to fly a default AC for very long – a half-hour is usually sufficient to cause a mild rash. There is a way around that, if you wish to employ it. Before even flying the first freight job, the AH user can simply sell the initial AC. You’ll get only half what it could be bought for, but if you’d rather eat worms than fly the default Skyhawk, you may consider that a good bargain. AH also permits an overdraft of $100K – you can go into the red by up to that amount and the bank will still cover the bills. Putting that into the mix too, I’ve tabled out the following options at the various startup levels to give some insight into what’s really possible in the way of a starting AC. If you choose to immediately sell the startup AH aircraft, you'll have the original grubstake amount, the revenue received for selling the default AC, and up to 100K of deficit spending (overdraft) available. In round numbers, assuming the choice of a very cheap $10K first base and retaining an operating capital of 10% of the selling price of the initial AC, you will find yourself in one of these situations, depending upon the starting mode... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CAREER or HARD Mode Assets: Initial Cash - $100K Sale of Skyhawk - $100K Overdraft Limit - $100K Costs: Base - $10K Operating Capital - $10K Cash Available for purchasing (cannot lease at 40% rep) alternate AC - $280K Which can buy: C-182 or any of the default Mooneys - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MEDIUM Mode Assets: Initial Cash - $200K Sale of Caravan - $763.6K Overdraft Limit - $100K Costs: Base - $10K Operating Capital - $76.4K Cash Available for purchasing/leasing alternate AC - $977.2K Which can buy: Lockheed Vega 5B or 5C (but why would you), or a pair of Beech Barons, or can lease anything up to a DHC Dash-8. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - EASY Mode Assets: Initial Cash - $500K Sale of LearJet - $1,950K Overdraft Limit - $100K Costs: Base - $10K Operating Capital - $195K Cash Available for purchasing/leasing alternate AC - $2,345K ...which can buy: Cessna Caravan, or can lease anything up to a DHC Dash-8 with a lot of money remaining. Using the 100K overdraft is not necessary in this case and you’ll still have a sizeable wad of cash left over and above the $195K operating capital. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Obviously the cost of the initial base chosen will affect these scenarios, particularly in Career or Hard modes. Also, the availability of add-on aircraft in the user's installation will add to the choices of what's available to buy or lease. In any case, the figures above and the types of default AC that can be bought or leased will give some idea of what kinds of add-on AC are really affordable at the beginning of each of these starting modes. It should also be noted that in the Easy mode start, bank loans are available. Tapping that to the maximum can put your available cash up over the $7 million mark – making the lease of a B-737-400 or an MD-83 possible. That’s about the practical limit of how high up the AC scale you can actually begin in AirHauler. It’s quite a large step up from the Lear 45. I think you can see from the foregoing that schlepping around hauling cargo in one of the default FS aircraft is unnecessary in AH. If you own some add-ons you like more, import them into AH immediately and see what they come up with for sale price or lease cost. Chances are you will not have to fly a single job in the default AC. You’ll have to console yourself over not being able to use the MD-11 or the Herc or the A380 right off the bat, but neither will you be flying a FS default AC and there’s certainly something to be said for that. Happy Hauling. Link to post Share on other sites
ddavid 149 Posted June 3, 2010 Report Share Posted June 3, 2010 Hi John Another very good tutorial on how to begin with Air Hauler - I'm sure this will be very useful for many starting out on their AH 'career'. I certainly enjoyed clawing my way up from the bottom in the C152 - it was such a relief to get into something with a bit more punch. Mind you, having spent a lot of time at the controls of the default C208, I think you'd find it difficult to get a better sim AC of that type ..... Long Live the Caravan!! Cheers - Dai. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted June 3, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 3, 2010 Dai, Several of my local flight sim club cohorts seem to agree with me that the Caravan is the best of the FS9 default AC, by a fair margin. Not quite payware quality, perhaps, but the best of the lot. John Link to post Share on other sites
ddavid 149 Posted June 4, 2010 Report Share Posted June 4, 2010 You know, I liked the default C208 so much, I bought the payware version - only �7.99, I think - from Feel-There (Just Flight). It is better, both inside and out, and it has the Garmin 1000 glass cockpit fitted, too. Been too busy with Mission development to use it much recently, but it's great for 'sight seeing'.... Cheers - Dai. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted June 5, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2010 I'm just about to start a new Career mode company with the Carenado C-182RG, which I can manage as a starting AC using the method described in the article. John Link to post Share on other sites
Sabre 28 Posted January 16, 2012 Report Share Posted January 16, 2012 Great information here John Could this not be a stickied post? Would be really useful. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted January 16, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 16, 2012 There were a whole series of these AirHauler -> Airhaulics articles. They were monthly for a while, so there are really too many to sticky, but all are still in this subforum. John Link to post Share on other sites
Sabre 28 Posted January 17, 2012 Report Share Posted January 17, 2012 There were a whole series of these AirHauler -> Airhaulics articles. They were monthly for a while, so there are really too many to sticky, but all are still in this subforum. John Thanks John - I'll hunt them out Link to post Share on other sites
simurq 0 Posted November 6, 2013 Report Share Posted November 6, 2013 Thank you, John - that's a great startup tutorial for a newbie like me... Apart from debiting 100K (?) for opening a new base at PAPG in Career mode (versus 10K in your post above), everything sounds and behaves nice so far... PS: Btw, I think it's worth getting all these tutorials/articles scattered around here under a single/sticky thread maybe... Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted November 6, 2013 Author Report Share Posted November 6, 2013 Glad you're enjoying them and finding them helpful. John Link to post Share on other sites
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