I probably should have posted this at their forums, but didn't want to register at yet another forum until required (probably laziness more than anything, though..lol)I'm thinking of purchasing. Quickly, then, does this program allow you to make it as simple or complex at you wish? What I would like to do is simulate a small cargo outfit with one or two aircraft in Alaska. In other words I'd have no ambition to add more aircraft and create a global outfit. Is that possible or does the program want you to build an empire?Thanks!

I probably should have posted this at their forums, but didn't want to register at yet another forum until required (probably laziness more than anything, though..lol)I'm thinking of purchasing. Quickly, then, does this program allow you to make it as simple or complex at you wish? What I would like to do is simulate a small cargo outfit with one or two aircraft in Alaska. In other words I'd have no ambition to add more aircraft and create a global outfit. Is that possible or does the program want you to build an empire?Thanks!

You will be able to do that easily. It gets as "complicated" as you wish it to be. Opening a small outift in Alaska will be: 1. easy 2. FUN!That's the way I operate myself (in Australia).

You won't easily advance with just one plane, as your reputation will sink for every day in the real world that you do not pay attention to your fictional company. You can "hire" co-workers to fly the flights you'd rather avoid, and so keep your company running.FSX has trouble with runways that are directly next to seaplane bases, and Air Hauler shares the same issue. Avoid airports with runways next to seaplane bases! Otherwise Air Hauler will think that you are delivering to one when you are actually delivering to the other. Despite the fact that the airport and the seabase share exactly the same facilities, Air Hauler will dock you severely for going to one of these places. I mention this as Alaska is one of the few places in default FSX where this can happen. Beyond that, Air Hauler is very addictive. Plan on spending a lot of time with it! Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

Thanks, Guys!Jeff, by what your describing It sounds like it may not be something I'd want. If I need to grow my business rather than simply maintain what I have to keep the program happy, then I'm not interested. As I said, I don't want a big outfit and am not interested in advancing a great deal. I'm just looking to add a little structure and purpose to my flying.Likewise, I planned on doing a lot of flights to seabases in Tongass Fjords. Sounds like I'd have a problem...Thanks again!

You can keep your operation in Air Hauler simple if you like, there is a lot of flexibility in how it generates work, so you can keep it to generating small jobs at airfields of a limited size and there would be no need to expand into some kind of huge corporation at all. Effectively the problems remain the same for a large company as a small one, and only the numbers and sizes of aircraft change, so it works just as well with a large company as with a small one. There are a lot of people on the Air Hauler forums who are happily running small seaplane/landplane ops with no ambitions to expand any larger, since all they really want is a purpose to their flights, and Air Hauler will certainly give you that..You can add your own air bases with something such as ADE (i.e. you could easily put seaplane bases anywhere you liked) and Air Hauler will recognise them providing you get it to re-adjust the FS database (takes about 5 mins for it to do that), so the problem with airfields for add-on terrain is fairly easily solvable.I would suggest downloading the Air Hauler manual and giving it a look to see if it is something you would like. I don't think there are many people who have not been hugely impressed with it. What is more, it regularly receives updated features via frequent patch updates - in fact it got one today - which added quite a lot of nice stuff for FSX.Al

Thanks, Al.If I'm able to get Tongass fjords and it's bases working with it, I'll be happy then.I didn't realize we could download the manual. I'll certainly have a look at that and a closer look at their forums.Thanks for the info!Shane.

Is it possible to use addon planes with AH?

Is it possible to use addon planes with AH?

Yes it certainly is.

AH makes it easy to import aircraft, so yes ... it is possible to use add-on aircraft.

I tend to be doing other things and neglect my company. I get a bad reputation, change my name and start over. I guess I should just develop a "Fly By Night" logo and be done with it.

It can be tricky on higher levels and a bit of bad luck can wipe you out if you run to very tight margins, but then again that's true in the real world with airlines, so I suppose it's quite realistic in that respect.I damn-near wiped out my cargo airline the other day by pushing a bit too hard, and ended up with an aircraft stuck on the ground in France because i couldn't afford my fuel bills, but fortunately the problem was averted, although only just. Currently the bank won't lend me any more money, so I have my AI guy (and girl) pilots flying their asses off in my leased 737-900ER to get me a decent cash buffer, whilst I'm doing some very close to the bone overloaded flights in my DC-9 to get my reputation up so mister bank manager can lend me enough money to lease the LDS 767. Being able to afford a 747 is a distant dream at the moment LOLIt's all good fun stuff.With regard to the 'importing add on planes' question. One thing worth bearing in mind is that Air Hauler does not do all the work for you on that score. Typically it will import aircraft without problems, but you do have to fill out one or two stats yourself, these being the average fuel burn, V speeds for the gear and flaps, and the range, so you do occasionally find yourself browsing places such as airliners.net to find those stats. However, there is a useful stickied thread on the Air Hauler section of the Just Flight forums which has a lot of that info posted, so it's usually not a big deal.The only aircraft I've ever really had problems with when importing them into Air Hauler, were the FS9 Captain Sim C-130 Hercules, and the Flight 1 ATR-72. The issue with the CS Hercules has been resolved in an AH patch, but the Flight 1 ATR-72 requires you to tweak the config file for the aircraft so that it comes in with the capabilities of a cargo variant, otherwise it imports with a cargo capacity more akin to the cargo hold on a passenger variant.It has to be said though, such instances are rare, and they are more to do with aircraft developers not putting in the correct stats in the config file than any issue with Air Hauler itself, although despite that being the case, you will find the support you get from the AH developer is really second to none when it comes to assistance in resolving any such issues, which is in fact one of the reasons why I and many others rate Air Hauler so highly.Al

Do you fly over gross? I am not sure what happens, so I trade cargo for fuel and stop for gas in the middle of nowhere half-way there.

I have occasionally flown over MTOW in Air Hauler when desperately trying to get reputation points, although I don't recommend doing that in some aircraft, especially that Ariane 737, because that's a real handful when badly loaded (I'm not kidding, I was immediately sorry I tried it the moment the wheels left the tarmac, it pitched up on take-off so badly that I had to keep the stick forward and put full forward trim in too just to prevent it going over maximum AoA and stalling LOL). I did manage to get it down in one piece, and I even made it to the destination, I pushed on because I was desperately hoping that the handling would improve as it burned off fuel, which it did only marginally, so I didn't attempt flying that thing out of trim and over MTOW again.I usually try and avoid making pit stops, but I have on occasion, and once or twice I've erred on the side of caution and diverted when the weather looked really bad at the destination airport, but most of the time I tend to push on through and that leads to some anxious watching of the fuel gauges on occasion! People might complain about the CS 757 landing with this or that tank still full, but I'm rarely in that position; I've got really good at fuel and route planning with regard to optimum cruise altitudes and favourable winds because of how I tend to jam the hold full of cargo.It's one of the reasons why I really go over the top on souping up my avionics; most if not all of the aircraft I fly in Air Hauler get a weather radar, the DBS VSD (the fact that the Ariane 737 doesn't have a VSD by default is one of my main gripes with it) and ACARS added, and since I normally use TSR Autobrake too and add runway slope to wherever I'm going, it's usually a good thing I've done so. Both the weather radar and the VSD have saved me from a messy end on some hillside on a few occasions.If you like a realistic challenge with your airliners, I can certainly recommend TSR Aurtobrake with Air Hauler, it will make you intimately familiar with reverse thrust and carefully choosing which brake setting you pick when coming in on a wet runway, that's for sure.Al

This is the first I've heard of this program. It sorta looks like FSPassengers - I only tried the demo for that and liked it, but never purchased it. How does Air Hauler differ from FSP?

It is basically the same thing as FS Passengers but with a cargo airline, so unlike FS Passengers, it is very much focused on what aircraft can haul what weight and over what distance, as opposed to passenger satistfaction and stuff like that.The gist of it is the same though, i.e, you start an airline (various difficulty settings), open an airbase and start hauling stuff to make cash and get your reputation up. Once your reputation hits 50 you can hire other pilots and start giving them flights to do, once your reputation hits 60 you can get bank bank loans to lease and buy aircraft, open other bases of operation and that sort of thing.A better reputation means the banks will be more willing to lend you money, whereas a poor reputation will mean they'll say no. Where it gets tough though, is that you can only improve your reputation through the flights you actually make in Flight Simulator, your AI pilots cannot contribute to your reputation; they can however, damage your reputation if they stuff something up, so you have to watch out for the AI pilots that are useless and try to hang on to the ones who are good at their job.There are some nice side things with it, for example you can float your company on the stock exchange or deal in stocks and shares of other companies, that's actually the real thing by the way (albeit with virtual money) since the program is linked to real world stock exchanges and you can trade in stocks based on that index link. Since it is linked to the real NYSE, NASDAQ, DOW etc, how you do is based on the real performance of stocks and shares in real life. Other stuff is index linked to the real world too, such as the price of jet fuel, so it can get quite interesting (especially in the current economic climate).You can upload your company statistics to a server and compare them with other people and see how you stack up in various ways, such as what aircraft you and others are using, who has made the longest flight, who has failed or succeeded with the most hauling jobs, and all that kind of stuff.It's pretty good fun and it adds a lot to FS in giving it a purpose, but on the difficult (career) setting you have to work pretty hard for success, as it was designed to be quite tough. Having said that, on the easier settings you can start off with a lot of cash and a LearJet, which means you don't have to potter about in a Cessna 172 for an eternity if you don't want to (the C172 is the default starting aircraft for the tough setting). The easier settings mean you can get loans and employ staff with a lower reputation level and the landing parameters and damage is a bit more forgiving on that level too, which means you can build a large company fairly fast if you really want to. Although a bigger company can obviously mean bigger headaches too of course.Al