One of the bonuses for the mission was not looking in the bags, so I didn’t.
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But the rollercoaster ride of turbulence that throws anything not bolted down into all corners of the aircraft is A-OK!
Stop taking drugs as cargo!
I don’t get why people are still talking about crazy weather. I have yet to fail a single landing. Or even significantly damage an aircraft. The worst I’ve done is lower flaps in gusty winds just as a gust pushed me a few knots over the threshold so I got a warning. Now I’m more careful!
The worst I had was a 53 to 60 kt tailwind in the Cessna. It was bumpy, I give you that. I landed fine with a 10 kt wind or something. And the weather was really quite deplorable there. It was in the mountains of northern California a week ago or so.
My last cargo mission was Southern California across Arizona and there was virtually no wind at all. It was almost… as smooth as glass.
What is not a bugfest in this software? No problem, I might just invest in a PC-12 instead and keep doing medium cargo missions. If only that aircraft wasn’t bugged out as well… Then maybe another C172 for fun. Oh but it’s unflyable due to the weather…
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You can add to that, firefighting and helo S&R, from my experience, as being very thin on the ground. Both “flavours” of VIP charter missions also appear to be in short supply and although I’ve done the gold-icon/starter mission for the higher level VIP missions, I’m still not sure how they’ll be distinguished on the map, with the lower level missions already having VIP in the icon?
Maybe we’re just not covering enough of the globe? 
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i’ve insured my C172 for 6000cr (the mid tier, billable every 24 hours). here’s my first insurance bill. i bought the plane yesterday.
is insurance bugged, or is them some other reason i’ve been billed 481% of the expected amount?
also, what’s the second highlighted expense? details are blank.
Am guessing cos I haven’t paid much attention to this, but is it 6,000 per hour of flight and billed every 24 hours?
Did you fly for 4.8 hours yesterday?
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oh, you’re quite correct. it is. i didn’t read the fine print. D: thank goodness i didn’t go for premium insurance.
in all likelihood this second unlabelled item was a Repaint (i thought it might let me customize the livery, but of course not. a complete waste of money).
i’m also quite unclear when salvage would be invoked vs crash coveage.
obiously a “crash” is one of the black-screen events which as we all know can occur arbitrarily, for instance when you spawn inside a building or convenient tree, or your Grand Caravan decides to ground loop on landing in a light breeze… but salvage?
The weather can be crazy, but that doesn’t mean you failed a landing. Heck, I almost nosed over a 172 once in one of those insanely gusty crosswind events but was able to save it and pass the mission.
I have noticed the sim chooses the nearest turnout when you land, but if you you still have a lot of speed as you approach , it will move to the next turn out further down which isn’t at all bad.
I’ve had that a few times, and although the turn off changes, it still plonks the place you are supposed to hold short at way behind you.
I’m going to see where this thing is in about 6 months time before spending any more time on it, but stay watching this thread to see how it evolves.
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The more posts added to this thread, the less I want to bother with it. It all sounds tremendously flawed — and not just because of the bugs.
I really do not want to spend time on a “game” that doesn’t respect my time and effort invested. The key takeaway, for me, is that Career Mode is wasting a significant amount of people’s time and effort in earned currency loss from aircraft damage they didn’t inflict due to bugs.
It is going to need serious polishing if I’m going to put in any real effort into it.
I’m frustrated enough by my time being wasted by bugs in Free Flight that halt progress after investing time in flight planning and pre-flight, but there are zero consequences to that.
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The mission generation (or lack thereof) is my biggest issue. I haven’t loaded it up yet today but I can tell you already that my available missions will be the Hebrides - Glasgow. Dublin - Glasgow, 2 or 3 various Airports in N England to Southampton, N France to Southampton and Kings Lynn to Maastricht.
In the 2 weeks or so I’ve been doing VIP charter I have never had a Manchester to Gatwick, or a Paris to London, or an Athens to Madrid.
How can I tell this? Because those are the same missions that have appeared every day in the UK.
Most 3rd party career apps let you generate missions from any airport, let you select short, medium or long flights for the plane you are using and will generate missions going in all directions.
I have fast jumped to unlock the map for a lot of european cities, and alot of the West cost USA and its the same there. 2 or 3 missions at best, and always the same ones. One was to bear town or something which was cool, another was to bear creek or something where the runway was like trying to land on a short wooded road at 7000ft. It was not pretty.
I unlocked Mexico City, the most populous city on the planet. Apparently there are 0 VIPS wanting a private jet there. I unlocked the bahamas. 0 VIPs, I unlocked NYC, 2 VIPS and neither really in the city itself.
Right, off to do another flight from Northern France to Southampton…yawn.
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It looks like Father Christmas might be creating more firefighting missions, as I’ve so far had another 2 in Australia and 2 in Florida.
Maybe people are letting Christmas fireworks off a little prematurely and starting forest/bush fires? 
Just 3 more A graded missions and I get to fly the beast that MS gave us in MSFS2020, for preordering. Well, some of us got it.
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Well, you’re lucky or well located. I’ve recently had flights that were like riding a mechanical bull on short final through roll out. “Galloping Gertie” would be a good nickname for my 208, because it reminds me of the Tacoma Narrows bridge that twisted itself to pieces.
If you don’t come in with a few extra knots, the turbulence and wind shear can make you stall. As soon as I get on the runway I’m retracting flaps and throwing it in beta to get rid of my flying energy because it’s an unstable nightmare risking a crash until you’re at taxi speeds. Happened the other day with a <20 knot crosswind. I got it down and immediately got rid of flaps because this 208 really likes to sink when you pull flaps, but nope, I was thrown back into the air nose high shortly afterwards. Coming back to Earth and it’s like the gear are perfectly rigid posts that you just wobble and tilt all over the place on, so you’re desperately fighting not to tip over. Landing the 208 is like throwing a bar stool and hoping it lands upright. I’m pretty sure I had a tail strike, and definitely a runway excursion, but I got it stopped and there wasn’t damage to the plane apparently.
I’ve chased tornado warned supercells in a 172 in real life, and the landings in Career Mode on a pleasant day can be hairier than any of those ever got.
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Big Bear and Bear Valley are the two CA missions. They made the mission system with the ability to automatically generate thousands of missions and limited it to just a handful with the same four awful TTS voice lines. Hopefully it opens up some day.
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Yeah, I think it’s picking them because they’re adjacent to ski resorts, which seems to be the trigger. Why Bear Valley (a ridiculously tiny, dangerous, private airstrip with no facilities), versus Tahoe or Truckee, I don’t understand. At least you can work flights out to Aspen if you get into the Great Basin area.
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For anyone interested, I made a long post about why the career-mode winds are doing what they’re doing and how to get better insight in order to make good decisions. It includes an update about some more recent findings that actually make some sense as to the way it’s designed to be implemented.
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This has never happened once to me. (aside from the midnight local bug). I think we have a lot of people that either have systems that crash for whatever reason, or are simply not the the best at flying to put it as well as I can. I have never crashed, I have never significantly damaged an aircraft and never not been paid after spending significant time.
The bugs that affect me are that I can’t manually fill the fuel. Well I can, it charges, but then puts in default only. That’s frustrating and I get that. I’m forced to take off with default fuel only, but that’s always enough.
As much time as you spend in Flight Sim, I’d encourage you to at least try it out.
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