Econ Mod - Passenger Flight Test

Ok, so I did my first passenger flight test using Econ Mod.

I've posted the result photos in my album, but here is a more detailed explanation.

First - to summarize, I flew the DHC-2 Beaver. The flight included a first airport stop that had no fuel - 7ak2 and then on to PAGS where I could refuel.

Flight planning:

I grabbed the first info online I found for DHC-2 fuel burn (15 gal/hr). Now I punched my data into flight planner - I use a payware version, but I think plan-G would work nicely too. Based on speed given on the same website that gave 15 gal/hr, a cruise speed of 112 mph. So, that gave me a Dist of 95nm with a 19mph headwind and a time of 1h14m and a 19.3 Gal of fuel required.

Fuel:
19.3 Gal for the flight and about an extra hour for safey.
I added about an extra hour of fuel (the required 45 Min and some extra). This resulted in a total of 42 Gal of fuel (note this is much less than the beaver can carry (only Center tank 2 was at 100%, and the two other tanks around 10% as the fuel pic shows.

Payload:
As you can see by the FSX payload for beaver, I can carry four passengers (one in the copilot seat). I gave them each a 50lb luggage allowance, resulting in 200 lbs luggage that I distributed equally between the two baggage areas - again see Payload photo.

SPAACARS Initialization:
I now had fsx place my plane at the starting airport in a parking spot with the fuel, payload and flight plan data in place. I then started SPAACARS. Although the SPAACARS flight plan showed the loaded FSX plan (PAJN-PAGS), I changed the dest in SPAACARS to 7AK2. This could be done even after landing at 7AK2, just do it before sending the data to SPA website. This allows SPAACARS to have the correct flight leg ready to send to SPA, but also my planes GPS showed the entire flight on to PAGS. I can then continue on after my stop at 7AK2 without changing anything in FSX - allowing my fuel amount to remain accurate for the rest of the flight.

Pax/Cargo:
SPAACARS defaults to all extra load other than the pilot to go into cargo, so I moved my four passenger into the PAX field in the SPAACARS flight plan page. As you can see by the SPAACARs pic, I now have 4 passengers and 370cargo. Why not the 200lb cargo from fsx? Because of the pilot (170lb) is now showing in the cargo weight for SPAACARS. While I could have moved him over to PAX field and increased my revenue for Econ Mod, this would be less realistic, so I left him as cargo weight (in PAX flights for Econ - you get no extra revenue for cargo weight).

I was now ready to fly. I flew with real weather, which was fairly poor as usual. This required me to fly very low, below my 6500 or even 5500 cruise alt. I also had to fly around mountains to my destination - resulting in increased distance and time.

As you can see by the two photos of my resulting profit/loss statements, both flights provided a reasonable profit. Surprisingly the second leg with less fuel but a longer flight returned less profit than the shorter hop carrying more fuel.

Oh, by the way, for the second leg, I just shut down and restarted SPAACARS and corrected the flight plan and passenger/cargo again to reflect the last leg. I then returned to fsx where my plane was still parked at 7ak2. I fired up the engine and continued the last leg.

This flight plan was from Yoland's Postal flights - although I changed it to a passenger flight to test the econ mod in passenger mode (more than two pax entered into the SPAACARS pax field).

I'm relatively satisfied with the Econ Mod results for this flight.

John
<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Apr 05, 2016 - 11:00 AM</em><!-- end editby -->

I did note that passenger comments weren't working for excess G-force, so I've corrected this (no download by pilots needed).

Interestingly, in one of my flights I noted that while taxiing in the water I managed to bounce enough to scare my passengers due to high g-force. I'll test further as it only occurred once, and may have been related to excess taxi speed.

Also noted that it seems you can generally descend a lot faster than you can pull out of a dive. I find it really difficult to create passenger fright by diving my plane downward - but it can be done. I'll have to look into why there's so much difference in g-force reading.

John

I've made two test flights using the new econ - one passenger and one cargo. The passenger flight was done in a B1900 and the cargo in a Beaver.

The passenger flight correctly estimated my 16 passenger payload and give me my 10% profit over cost.

The cargo flight was off slightly in calculating my 20% profit (giving a bit more profit . I checked and found that this was due to a rounding error in calc the cargo capacity of the Beaver - it find 1289 where I find 1290 in looking at the fsx payload/fuel page for Beaver. So...by giving it one more pound of cargo than capacity, I increased my profit slightly above the 20% of cost.

Also note that, when calculating your cargo capacity in fsx, you have to add extra cargo wgt back into fsx for your pilot and or copilot in SPAACARS. I noted that my singe pilot in the Beaver reduced my cargo wgt below the 1290 I calculated as my capacity, so I had to add the difference to bring that cargo wgt back up to 1290. Remember to shut down and restart SPAACARS after any change to payload in FSX otherwise it won't recognize it.

I've also added the DHC-2 Beaver to our Fleet burn-rate page, which shows the Beaver at about 161.9 gph. I used this in calculating my 23 or so minute flight to South Gasline (AK39).

The burn rates for popular aircraft based on SPA flights can be found at the bottom of our fleet page: Main Menu ->Download->Aircraft Fleet.

Hope this helps you have a profitable flight.

John