Jump to content

The Guided NAAFI Haulage Company and Tea Shoppe


Recommended Posts

Congrats! My fleet is almost entirely 185F's due to their amazing low price, amazing high cargo capacity, and amazingly low fuel consumption. My star/senior pilot Kenny is flying a C208B while my friend Stevie is flying the Kodak. I was flying sloppy and was banging the Kodiak and the cargo around, so I went back to the Bravo for now.

Reaching a new level of planes is always exciting. I'm looking forward to the multi-engine planes we're about to get into. I'm holding on to hopes for a DC-3 since we now have the cash for a new one (as if they even existed!), but I'm hoping to find one on the used market this weekend.

Good luck with the 182 and with Dag and Angie! Keep on 'em to make sure they don't turn in a haul late. It's happened to me a few times now and no amount of public floggings will take that "fail" off your record.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't managed to get the whole fleet in one place for a group photo, so here are the individial mugshots...

gnafa.jpg

Fox Alpha was our first 'keeper'. It's a 182Q. 800 nautical miles at 140 knots, and STOL. It'll get into a 350m strip without breaking a sweat. And get out again.

gnafb.jpg

Fox Bravo was our first 206. A bit quicker than the 182, but significantly shorter range, at 600 miles. However it makes up for it with a massive load capacity

gnafbamphib.jpg

Ok, this is arguably a bit of a fantasy, since an amphib is not exactly practical in the UK (RW there are fewer than 10 amphibious/float planes regeistered in the whole UK)

gnafc.jpg

Our second 182, Fox Charlie has the dangly dunlops

gnafd.jpg

And finally, Fox Delta is our second Stationair.

With the opening of bases in Prestwick and the Channel Islands, the number of over water flights is going to increase significantly, so we'll be looking to aquire a couple of twins too...

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...

Something very strange went wrong with my database overnight, and today I kept getting unhandled exception errors every 30 seconds ("BOF or EOF or the current record has been deleted"). So I had to roll back to yesterday's backup (you do keep backups of your company db...? ;) ) Which is a shame, because I got in a couple of decent loads (despite how the minions loaded the plane - see screenshots). On the other hand, Barnes Wallis still has his job, because after causing 24% damage to my brand new CargoMaster yesterday with a "dangerous" landing, I was about to fire his arse.

I guess this is a good time to announce our continued expansion into Europe. We now have French bases in Bordeaux and Cannes, as well as our Luxembourg base and the UK bases in Prestwick, Bristol, Lydd and Alderney, and we're currently in negotiations for hangarage at the GA airfield in Madrid. Hola! :thumbup:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hola Tim

That's a shame about the corrupt database. Have you installed some new airfields recently? Like OZx airfields? Always a good idea to rebuild the airport database in AH after installing. It may not be that but it is a known error for Access databases. (I am sure you know that already)

Joe

Link to post
Share on other sites

No, no scenery changes, and the previous day's backup worked fine. I've still got the corrupt one, so I may investigate it further sometime, in the event that I run out of things to do...

Edit: Just discovered that one of the minions, in a landing that the BEA preliminary report described as 'suicidal' (BEA = Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile. The French equivalent of the AAIB) Unfortunately, the plane she did a massive amount of damage to was the only plane I own outright. She won't get a good reference when she leaves hospital.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...

You have to watch these minions like a hawk...

Okay, first a small confession. Yesterday I bought, well, leased, a brand new Caravan, and decided I'd take it out on its first flight. It was a nice little, lucrative trip - Bristol to G-G-Granville[*]. Lots of dosh for a few designer rags. Anyhow, I rather stuffed it up and "planted" it on the beach, somewhat short of the fence. :th_smiles73: If that had been a minion, he'd have been out on his ear! Expensive, but fortunately I had it insured. There's a reason I don't like turbines. (mostly cos I can't fly them for shtoffee...)

So, now I'm browsing through the flight journal, and I notice an entry under one of the minions (Kyle 'the pile' Driver) made a landing that the investigator recorded as 'catastrophic', with massive amounts of damage. That's odd, thought I, I'd have definitely noticed if any of my planes were that broken, and a double check showed the worst of them was at 97% (and that wasn't the plane in question). Hmmm... Further digging turned up a repair invoice slipped in under the mat for... £27,320! :stars:

[*] Ronnie Barker fans will get that

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...

Some advice: Don't play AirHauler while you have the flu. I did, and managed to lose 5 points of rep in a single day! I had minions flying empty planes because the job sheets were backwards, minions simply ignoring jobs they had allocated (still not sure why that happened), jobs that I meant to assign to a minion but didn't, and jobs to fly myself that I didn't fly because I went back to bed. On the whole, an unmitigated disaster!

Also, a few weeks back I leased a couple of Twin Otters. Superb planes. Well deserved reputation for getting loads in and out of 350m bush strips, small beaches etc - if it was any more STOL it would be fruit bread. But AH in its "wisdom" has slapped a 1000m runway limit on it! I mean, WTF? Consequently probably 50% of the jobs AH generates for it then can't be flown because the runway is too short. :001_th_smiles48: (yes I know it doesn't restrict on jobs I fly myself, but the thing about having two of them is... I can only fly one!)

The lease on them is paid till the end of the month, so I'll keep them until then, but at that point they'll go back, to be replaced by some more cargomasters. Okay, the load is slightly less (not as much less as you might think, bearing in mind minions will always fly with full fuel, and the Twotter had big tanks), but they have a similar range and are a lot cheaper to run.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...