Thanks to kilosierra for bringing this to my attention.

Signed up tonight and got activated pretty quick. I had to sign in twice, once for the forums, then had to request an actual FSE account, then had to sign in to that. Aside from having to go through IE to install FSE, it was a pretty painless experience. There wasn't a hitch with IE either, but I just felt weird using that browser... thankfully it only took a few minutes.

After a quick read of the tutorial, I managed to find an airport with a Cessna 172 and a reasonable job available. Fuelled up, and flew. Pretty easy to use, however, with my troubles with triple-screening FSX across my 19-24-19" monitors, I had to make a couple of restarts just to make it work. I also learned how to make a simple A-to-B flight plan which helped me find my destination easier. I ended up flying with just one screen as my center screen would "freeze" if I exited FSX in any way, even if it was just to Alt-Tab to the FSE client. Weird as the center screen would freeze but the side screens would still work. Meh. Annoyingly, even with just the center screen working (no triple-screen), my left, right, and bottom monitors stayed black anyway... and I couldn't drag the GPS into any of them. Very irritating!

So my job was to take 3 passengers from Fernandina Beach Mun, Florida (55J) to Camp Blanding AAF (2CB), with a distance of 48nm. The payment was $1,498. After renting the aircraft (dry), I loaded it up with 50% fuel as it was left with only 7gallons. Then I took the passengers on board, took off, then headed straight for 2CB. The flight lasted 34 minutes and I was really just an A-to-B driver, no heeding airspeed or altitude restrictions and flew everywhere between 1500 and 6000 AGL, playing with the trim the whole time. I followed my GPS in (still don't know how to work the bloody thing!), and if it weren't for the GPS, I would've probably just flown past Camp Blanding, as it was apparently just a grass strip with a small stack of machinery and what looks like a big air tank in the middle-left side of the runway. The airstrip had a rotating-beacon lighthouse-like thingy at the end of the runway as well. I ended up with $1,289.39 for this flight which I think is good for a first flight of about 30 minutes wherein I only really handled the airplane on take off and landing.

I felt bad as I exited the aircraft and the sim. As FSE "remembers" which aircraft is in what airfield/airport and the current fuel state of the aircraft, I felt bad leaving the Cessna at an out-of-the-way grass airstrip. Who knows when it'll be flown out of there and be brought back to "civilization"? Although it was just a rental, well, I thought with it sitting there as well, it had a small chance of being rented out again as opposed to if I left it at a busy hub airport. I used up about 9% fuel there so I know the aircraft is good for a few more rounds. I might come back tomorrow and fly her out of there with a few more passengers.

Would be great if FSE did some UK airports... my search parameters of Cessna 172 only yielded US airports... a quick search of London Gatwick gives me a nice list of assignments but limited aircraft choices. I wonder what it will take to bring a Cessna 172 into London. Or probably buy my own and do flights out of London Gatwick... or better yet out of Newcastle!

Hi,

the "problem" with the C-172 is, there are too many of them. FSE only shows one page, so there are only US based ones in the list, as they come first.

I did a search, go to "Airport", choose aircraft, in this case C-172 Skyhawk, chooose "airports that are within 50 NM From EGKK (Gatwick)", this gives you one plane at EGLK and one at EGLL. With planes which are more rare, you sometimes need to search in a bigger range.

Another small hint, you can set up your flight in the browser too, it`s more comfortable than in the client. The client must be running when doing the flight though. Btw. sometimes the server is a little slow, leave the client alone while it is saying it is transferring the data. Flights can be logged even after hours.

What you already found out by yourself, one of the few no-gos is leaving a plane stranded with no fuel at a airport were no fuel is available, especially when it is privately owned.

Have fun, as I already said, there are endless possibilities, one member of our group even did a around the world trip.

Greets

K.

Yep, having trouble figuring out that search page. Will try out your tips! I do my setting up using the browser simply because it is easier to navigate and I can open stuff on new tabs---the client does not do this. So I keep the My Flight tab open on the client and work everything else out on the browser.

I think the FSE bug has bitten me hard. After that first flight, I did two more flights last night... slept at around 3:30 AM!

My second flight was transporting 11 Jetstar passengers 39 miles from Newcastle airport to Carlisle. Funny how Newcastle airport is considered an international airport but in FSE it is a small airport? Oh well. Anyway, these 11 passengers weren't actually 11, I just happened upon 11 of them (in groups of 2 or 3) going to the same place. However, unlike other pax or cargo, these guys' names were listed in green text --- I wonder what that means? So I find a Cessna 208 Caravan with, get this, 24.2 gallons (7%) of fuel, and the FBO in Newcastle had no fuel! Some rough calculations told me I'd probably have enough fuel for the hop to Carlisle anyway, so with a nervous grin to the passengers, I loaded them up into the 208. A quick takeoff and pointing the aircraft in the right direction, I started fiddling with the trim again. Funny how the aircraft will be steady on one speed and one climb rate, give the Home key a couple of presses, the climb rate will go down, aircraft speeds up, then the climb rate goes up again, and eventually the aircraft will find a steady speed and climb rate. Then I trim again, and again, and again... our flight looks like an aircraft climbing a staircase, I guess. I managed to settle with about 100ft/min climb rate which is as "level" as I could get it and it was about 7,000ft AGL, which I thought was good in case we did make a flameout landing.

During this flight, I logged on to the FSE teamspeak channel and just after takeoff, a nice lady named Rachel came on TS and actually noticed my name, recognized me as a new member, and said "oo, fresh meat!" She and other "regulars" stayed on the whole flight and we had a very pleasant conversation and I learned a bit more about FSE as well. Apparently, Rachel was taking an aircraft on a ferry job from Africa to somewhere in South America and she was talking about her experiences along the way as well as her planned route for today. I just thought ferry jobs were just "get from A-to-B" jobs but apparently, she would hop from airport to airport and her route, while taking a general direction, was also influenced by which jobs were available at the airport. She was actually taking on cargo/passengers as well! She explained that she would get money upon completion of the ferry, but she is also getting money from transporting passengers/goods as well. The bonus there was that apparently, her group and the aircraft owner also gets a cut of what she is doing and she guesstimates that the owner would've recouped the expenses of ferrying the aircraft by the time she makes the delivery.

By this time, I was near Carlisle and was starting my descent. I had about 20% throttle and a 400ft/min descent rate, straight in to the airport. I've not learned "proper" procedures yet but thankfully FSE just tracks deliveries and does not care if you fly inverted the whole time or not serve the passengers any snacks or if you buzz the tower on the way in. I found I was a bit high and fast on my final so I did an "S" flight path, losing altitude and airspeed with each turn. Aside from that stunt (60-degree turn, hard pull on the stick to bleed energy), I'd say it was a "typical" civvie flight... but at least I gave my passengers some excitement before they had to resume whatever it was they did on the daily grind. The job paid $5,457.00 and I made $4,681.02 after the fees. This is where I found out I paid both Jetstar and Euro Connect for every "delivery" I made. I think the first one was because they were Jetstar passengers and the second was I think the FBO that operated the Carlisle airport.

I landed with 3% fuel, close call!




My next job was another passenger hop, but I couldn't find a good load of people going to one location so I took a group that was going to an airport along the way. This time, only a DC-3 aircraft was available from the airport I was starting from (London Heathrow). Thankfully, this one had 55% fuel in the tanks so I was all good. I've never flown the aircraft before, but like with the 208, I figured I could wing it.

Takeoff and turn to the first waypoint was uneventful, but for some reason, I got confused on the first waypoint and I thought I was going to land.... spent a good 10 minutes circling the area looking for the airfield thinking it was probably a grass strip somewhere... and ended up stalling the aircraft and crashing. Oh boy! Good thing these are "virtual passengers," eh? I cancel the flight, go back to Heathrow, and find my passengers back there waiting for me already strapped in the DC-3. Takeoff and turn again uneventful, then fiddled with the trim yet again. Anyone know how many rotations a trim wheel can do? Ad naseaum? Might need to invest in one of those trim wheels later on. Soon enough, I got the aircraft trimmed and I started watching some standup comedy on YouTube on one of my side screens while keeping an eye on the aircraft in my center screen. Yes, I've given up trying to wide-screen FSX. More trouble than it's worth... if it's not the FSE client acting up, its FSX itself not wanting to exit properly and me having to close it via Task Manager.

Anyway, good thing I was keeping an eye on the aircraft. For some reason, we came across some turbulence. I thought it'll be alright, I had a few bumps in the Cessna 208 earlier but it held altitude and heading. Not so for the DC-3. The aircraft got tossed about, the left wing tipped down, and the aircraft started to go down and the left wing would keep going down and down and down ever-so-slowly. It wasn't a big deal to correct, but it was weird how such a big aircraft can be de-stabilized like that. The rest of the flight was uneventful and I was able to finish my "in-flight movie." However, coming up to my first stop, I found out I was lined up on a short runway so I had to adjust to re-align myself on the longer runway. This was when I was acquianted with the sluggish turn rate of the DC-3. Even when almost stood on it's wing and with just enough back pressure to keep from losing too much airspeed, it still took 1/3 of the sky to turn. It was yet another bit of excitement for my passengers before landing, though I probably should've warned them of it beforehand and advised anyone who had a drink still in the glass to finish it soon.

I love the way the DC-3 just takes off on its own with enough airspeed, and with full flaps and slow airspeed, it also settled on the runway beautifully. That was part 1 of the job done, and the final stop was only 11 minutes away. After getting paid for that part of the flight, I had a smooth takeoff, turn towards Gloucestershire, and made sure I was aligned with the longer runway this time, so no more excitement for the passengers just before landing. I made just over $5,500 on that hop for about 40 minutes of flight, which although sounds a lot, I was actually making less per minute of flying compared to the Cessna 208 flight.

Around this time, it was 3am in the morning so I decided to call it a night...put all my money from my account in the bank --- the guys in TS3 confirmed there was no reason to keep "cash on hand" and it was always better to put stuff in the bank simply because it accrues interest daily.

I always thought civvie flights were boring, and although I was always amazed at the cool screenshots and the "stories" behind the flights seemed fun, but until FSE, I never could see the fun in flying from one random airport to another. With FSE "helping" me decide where to fly from and where to fly to, as well as giving me a reason to fly, makes it a whole lot more interesting, even without things going BOOM!

Nice AAR,

as I said, FSE is very addictive.

As for the different jobs, the black ones are system jobs, randomly produced from FSE.

The green PAX jobs are those generated from the pivately owned FBOs. You can set up one or more different destinations to/from your FBO. The PAX however are produced randomly, so if you set up a FBO at EDDK with the destination EDDH, PAX will be produced in EDDK and EDDH, however when and how many is still up to the FSE system.

As for the sometimes odd airport sizes, FSE is based on the database of FS9 and the "size" of the airport in FSE is measured after the combined length of its runways. So if you in reality have an airfield with say 10 different grass-runways, in FSE it shows as a big airport.

Another problem you might run into, as the airport databases of FSE and FSX sometimes doesn`t match, you don`t find your destination in FSX if you type in the ICAO code FSE gives you. Then search after the city in FSX and compare the position given in FSX with the one from FSE. FSE logs the flight with these positions, it doesn`t have "airports", it only compares the position of the plane when you activate the parking brake with its databses and logs the flight with the nearest airport position.

I too recommend reading the FSE boards, there are often deals going on outside the system, like ferrying planes, transporting fuel or building material etc.

edit: Like I already said, a few years ago I already owned FS9, but flying was somewhat pointless. I once downloaded f.e. the schedule of Lufthansa to fly some of their routes, but only once in weeks. Since I found FSE, I bought FSX and a ton of addons and it made FSX the game I waste the most time with.

edit No.2:

Copied this out the screenshot thread, were I too searched for an "Airport":

Sometimes one should look at the charts first.

In FSEconomy I had a 2 Pax job from KUIL to S16, which FSE measured as a small airport (FSE works with the FS9 database of airports, the size of an airport is measured through the length of the runways, which at times ends in strange results), then I had 5 PAXs from S16 to KBFI.

On the first leg, ATC led me past S16 and then, nothing. So I cancelled IFR and turned around. At the position of S16, nothing, a beach. I did several passes (fuel was getting low already) and finally found a curved strip on the beach. Full flaps and the slowest possible approach. Phew! Definately not an airport, but a bloody strip on the beach, scenery is ORBX.








Some other shots:

Beech 1900D at EDDF




Lousy weather at the gate at LSZH

Sounds interesting, might have to check it out myself.

You might find a program called Destination Finder handy, destfn20.zip at Flightsim.com
Its meant for finding places to fly from/to but also gives you all sorts of information on any airport in sim.
Fully compatible with FS8, FS9 and FSX and can even build a database to take into account any addon scenery you have.

Anyone from SimHQ got any FSE groups or FBOs?

At the moment, I am seriously considering getting ORBX scenery and working from a central hub in FSE, most like the Pacific Northwest due to ORBX scenery and the number of FBOs in the area.

That's great to hear. Do you use real-time weather for these or some pre-set setting? Half the challenge to real world flying is dealing with the ever changing weather conditions that can challenge your mission completion (whether you are delivering boxes, patients, or passengers..)

Sounds like you are having a lot of fun..!

Lol, I just fly fair weather at noon all the time at the moment. Still working my way through Rod's tutorials, so when I fly, every now and again FSX reminds me that I need to lean the mixture, but don't know how so I just CTRL+X when that message comes up.

Weather, crosswind landings, IFR, all that fun will come in due time!

I am even considering doing VATSIM (shudder!!) for ATC calls! But that's way, way, WAY down the line!

Ice, your after action report inspired me to give it a go as well. After flying VATSIM for years in the heavy's at FL30 and above it is nice to change over to some of the smaller planes a bit closer to earth. I'm also really glad they have a wide selection of aircraft to fly, some of my favorites are available including the A2A B377, J41, and the BN-2 Islander.

I'm sure like you I have a bit more to learn the in and outs, but so far it was pretty easy getting that first flight done. Even if it was only 80 miles

Wow. I didn't realize FSE was free. I just requested an account and am looking forward to giving this a try. I am also one of those people that has a hard time getting past the "purposeless" flying in FSX.

Looking forward to this!

I'm starting to lose interest now, to be honest, as it's starting to bring out the min-maxxer in me. Doing flights in time compression don't sound like fun to me, and the "big shots" apparently do the long hauls with autopilot on and on 16x time compression. Booo!

Just did a couple of flights tonight, boosted my account by a hefty 10K, but it wasn't as "fun" as before.

Still need to investigate some community-made mods for this though, might re-ignite the fire of the game... my biggest problem is finding proper loads that I can haul that makes the flight worthwhile. The TS3 users for this are a really friendly bunch though, I have no reason to expect them not helping out.

I can recommend Air Hauler published by Just Flight. its very addictive and there is a thriving community around it on the Just Flight Forums.

I'm getting back into FSX after a combat hiatus and enjoy Air Hauler (especially as it gives you a nice career path).

I also noted that REX Game Studies (the folk that make the Real Environment Essentials weather add-on for FSX, P3D etc) are working on a similar product called Sim Air which I'm keeping a very close eye on....apparently its in final beta phase now.

Neil

When i first saw your post on this i was thinking...Ice in FS? Is this the same Ice? Lol. Sounds like good fun!

BTW, i have been getting into FSX again and have been using Plan-G. You can do real nice flifgt planning, and see your flight real-time on the map. I run it on a second PC networked, and it even shows other flights on the map, whether AI or VATSIM, multiplayer, etc. it's slick.

FSX is pretty incredible. I definetly need to check out FSE!

Air hauler looks like something I can get into, thanks for the tip. I figure if I can play pocket planes for weeks I could get into this as well. I'm gonna setup some prop hauling in Africa I reckon.

-C-

The golden rule of FSE is, don`t try to max your revenue at all costs.

I almost always don`t fly with time compression on. Even the big transfers I did, like the C-130 from Aussie, or several other planes from the US to Germany.

Try to find one of the big hubs with nice scenery, ORBX land is perfect for this. And never forget, the most effective flights are those around 100 to 150 NM. So you get the most money and have the most fun, because the flights are short and you often have to fly procedures. Of course these high paying jobs are tempting, but they are often big and/or long range. To fly them efficiently, you have to have a big bird and a lot of time. You need to collect several of them into a roughly similar direction. Or being part of a group, we have pilots, who fly the heavies from hub to hub and others (like me), who bring the load from the hub to the final destination.

I really would like to share my experience with FSEconomy.

I fly in FSE world for about a year. I flew for fun, to make money, joined a helicopter group, bought some small planes. At start I tried, as everybody else, to make quick money. The best plane for this purpose was the Cessna 208 Caravan, with its large capacity, fuel economy and great speed. The most profitable flights were indeed around 100-120nm. The key is to find routes that constantly generate jobs back and forth.

When possible, I fly over high quality terrain (ORBX scenery is perfect) to keep my interest high with sightseeing. It is also cool to fly at various times of the day as in dawn and early evening, and also in various seasons and weather conditions. It's a challenge on itself to takeoff and land small aircraft in nasty weather.

My most memorable flights were when I purchased my first two small planes, a Diamond Katana and a Lancair Legacy. Of course I bought the two payware models from Aerosoft and RealAir, respectively. I use ORBX PNW as a base area and the point was to bring these planes to this area from the places that I bought them.

I bought the Katana from North Carolina so I had to fly it (no autopilot in this bird!!) over the continental US. Tennesee, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and then over ORBX land, CRM and finally PNW. I had a blast during this flight passing over Wyoming highlands, Yellowstone, Idaho Falls, Craters of the Moon, Hell's Canyon, Lewiston, and then over Washington to British Columbia, Canada. It took many days at 60-100 mile hops. Whenever convenient, I took single passenger jobs on the way to pay for the fuel.. It was a great adventure to bring the small Katana to my base area through a 2000+ mile journey. I would never have taken it if I wasn't flying in FSE!!

I bought the Legacy in northern Brazil, somewhere on the Amazon river. Then started the second adventure, over Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and currently I am going to Panama on my way to PNW area. Great journey so far and more exciting ahead!! I am thinking of getting the UTX Tropical America and Caribbean as I now enter this area..

The key is to try many different things when flying in FSE world to avoid getting bored by trying only to raise money.

Nick

yup,

bringing planes home is cool, as one mostly flies in unknwon regions. My first one was one of the first planes we bought for our a group, a PC-12 which stood in Califonia. I brought her the whole way to Germany. Secong long range ferry was a Jetstream from southern US to Germany and the longest trip was a C-130 from Australia. Was quite a sight over the Himalaya, with mountains passing a few hundred ft under the plane while the instruments said 24k ft.....