Midnight Sun Airlines

[Deleted]

Well, I've been having such a blast flying around Norway and trying out some airplanes that I've not used in a while, that I think I'm going to stay a while. I've got 2 small operations going, the first being Taiga, which is all cargo. You saw a PIREP recently with a 737 and a Dash 8, both converted to freighters, but that didn't take. So now Taiga is made of up a Cessna 207, the 402 and the Lear 35. It's HQ is in Kristiansand (ENCN) at the moment, but that may be moving. We have sub hubs in Nottoden and Sandane. Taiga, in fact, merged with the defunct Arctic Air of Norway, but has kept its name despite being under the same roof as the partner company. That company is known as Midnight Sun Airlines and is based at Narvik/Evenes in Northern Norway. It's primary function is as a people carrier to service northern Norway and connect them with the south and points in Europe. The fleet for Midnight Sun is made up of a couple of older Avro RJ85's, Cessna 441's and Cessna 402's. The 402's will service the far northern airstrips along the coast across to Kirkenes primarily, as well as down the Lofoten Island chain. The 441's will connect the distant reaches of this territory (such as Kirkenes) with the HQ at Narvik, and with smaller fields down to southern Norway. The RJ85 will primarily fly out of Evenes to more distant locations which include Sumburgh, Scotland, and several other destinations in the UK and Ireland; the rest of Scandinavia and several points in northern Germany. It's a perfect aircraft for this sort of operation as it can handle runways as short as 1050 m (about 3500 ft) with a full load and do steep descents when needed. I have been test flying this aircraft extensively the past week or two to see just what it would do, and it's pretty impressive.

The logo for Midnight Sun (and all the graphics) were generated by me as I haven't been happy with "borrowing" graphics off the internet, which is why it's taken a while to bring this all to light. MSA's logo is (obviously) a midnight/low sun which is being reflected in a cold (blue) northern sea. Overlain is a bird graphic gracefully flying with the sun behind it, representing the avian part of this operation. Anyway, hope you like it.

So our doors will be officially opening soon and you'll be reading about both Taiga and Midnight Sun in this forum as I get time. Thanks for looking in.

[scottb]

Nice logo! Looks sharp

-Scott

[Bushpounder]

Looks NICE!!!

BP;)

[pivo11]

Certainly is a fine logo, indeed! 

[Deleted]

Thanks folks, appreciate it very much

I have to tell you, I'm loving this Avro. Not quite as polished as PMDG, but it sure isn't far off it functionally. Of course, it's a much older plane IRL so it won't have some of the extras that the NG series have, but man, this really performs, is beautiful to fly and the FMC is relatively easy to program. For QW's first entry into the "almost-fully-functional" market they really did a good job.

[Deleted]

Oh well, so much for that. I wasn't going to say anything about this VA until I had done more test flying of the Avro. It seemed to be going very well so I decided to spill the beans. On my last test flight today, it did something I have seen it do before, but I attributed it to turbulence. It can't hold an altitude in a turn on autopilot, particularly if it is coming down and supposed to be leveling off while in a turn. My 2 hour flight ended with a red X as I was turning final, when the thing blew through the altitude (I was only descending at 1000 fpm), the autothrottles didn't know what to do so didn't do anything, and it stalled. Yes, I could have caught it, but this thing has an FMC, full A/P with A/T and this was hardly a difficult test for it. At least, it shouldn't have been. I hit the red X before hitting the water, and that's the end of that ops, unless I simply switch back to airplanes that work.

At the rate things are going with me and computers this weekend, I think I'll just take a little break. I'm sick of the damn things. Time to go do something else.

[Deleted]

Well, some good news on this front. I did some tweaking and the A/P seems to work fine now. I think I might have been the maker of my own problems on this one anyway in how I had the airplane configured when the thing fell out of the sky. I did another test flight tonight and watched my configuration a lot more closely and it was fine. So, Midnight Sun Airlines is back up and hoping to get officially off the ground towards the end of this week. Stay tuned

[Bushpounder]

Glad to see you didn't give up on that! Of course, Tuesday IS only an hour and seven minutes from now!!

BP;)

[Deleted]

And now it IS Tuesday . I quite like this ops and especially with the fleet I have so I really wanted to make this one work. You have to pay a lot more attention to this airplane than the NG series and I didn't do that on the flight it had the problems with. This aircraft is perfect for what I want to do and where I'm doing it so it's worth spending the time to make sure I'm flying it right and even to learn its shortcomings so that I don't botch it up at critical times. Anyway, I have a possible name change and slight adjustment to the logo maybe coming before we open the doors officially (Friday I expect), but otherwise we're pretty much set up. Stay tuned .

[olderndirt]

Saw the new avatar and sniffed for that new airline smell.  Sure enough, wafting in from Ontario came that fragrant aroma of new liveries, airplanes and logos of seals often mistaken for eagles.

[Deleted]

That's a SEAGULL, not a "seal" Of course, seagulls are also sometimes known as sh*^hawks around here <LOL>

[Sandy]

Auto cucumber strikes again.

(I've mis-typed "correct" so many times in my phone, and had it auto-corrected to "cucumber", that I simply call it 'auto cucumber' now.)


~~~

I like the logo, very sleek and professional. And artistic. Seems to hit all the salient points one requires.


But... with some trepidation... I must ask about the vast array of virtual airlines that have been created and eventually submerged by Glenn. Not that I'm concerned about the virtual employees, I get the feeling there are only a few at each airline. And those few employees are the same at each airline, all with a serious attitude problem because they spend vast amounts of their time sewing new patches on their work uniforms. It must be a tough work environment. Imagine the ridicule of showing up in last month's airline uniform...

((my apologies Glenn ... "those who can't, poke fun at those who do"))

[Sandy]

Meanwhile "Odyssey Air Ventures" has flown three flights ... So yeah, glass houses and stones, right?

[Deleted]

<LOL> Actually I found your post quite funny, good and accurate Sandy . I keep trying to get something that actually "sticks" and it's just not working. Don't know if I've been around FS too long now or what, but it's getting old. I have to admit, cargo ops seem to work the best for me, if for no other reason than they can have the widest operational territories (cabatoge rules seem different for them than for passenger airlines, and being stupidly anal I seem to need to conform to the RW rules) and am now considering rolling everything into one "FedEx-like" ops that takes advantage of the enhanced scenery areas that I have and the better aircraft I have. They say in FS one shouldn't fly too close to home because you'll be disappointed. I think that's true, but I also think that one maybe shouldn't be trying to fly airplanes too close to what one flew in real life for the same reasons. Unfortunately for me, Carenado/Alabeo makes the airplanes I flew IRL and while the graphics are good (still far from perfect for those who really know these planes though), that's where the realism and immersion ends and I invariably come away wishing I had used something else. My best airplanes are anything PMDG, the Majestic Dash 8-Q400 (now, with the Pro version which greatly improved the terrible flight dynamics), and the Quality Wings Avro RJ/BAe 146. Flysimware's 402, 441 and Lear 35 are good although the graphics leave a lot to be desired, but at least the avionics and engine handling are above average. That combination leaves me with some pretty good cargo options though and I may have come up with something that will allow me to operate a "somewhat" realistic ops that can cover all the areas I'd like to. As long as the boredom doesn't take over again.

I must admit too, I'm trying to get **something** going that I can post PIREP's on because there used to be gobs of them here years back, but they seem to have dropped to a trickle (at best) these days. It's fun reading about other people's ops (at least it is for me, but maybe I'm the exception on this) as well as being inspirational to do one's own flying and posting about it. I'm not sure it's having the intended effect, or any, for that matter. People are busy with their lives, many of us on this site have been in FS almost since its inception and in some cases may now be finding it harder to keep up with the payware coming out due to the ever-increasing cost (some developers seem to forget this is a hobby for many and that money isn't unlimited); and without something new on a pretty frequent basis, this sim can, and does, get "old" pretty quick. Maybe that's telling us something, I don't know.

For me, FS has become almost an addiction. I really need to stop ignoring the graphics projects that I have lined up to do on my graphics machine and get going with that, spending a lot less time in FS, which might just keep it a bit more fresh for me. I can say all that with some degree of certainty because one of the things about switching ops all the time is I end up doing a LOT of designing and painting of aircraft liveries, which I seem to enjoy even more than flying them. So maybe that's telling me something too.

Anyway, maybe too there's a hint of desperation in my simming as well, because this computer I game on is not getting any younger, and when it dies, so too does FS for me. There's no money for a new gaming machine in my budget I'm afraid.

There, see what you started Sandy <LMAO>? It's a very dangerous thing to cause me to actually think <LOL>. I did get, and appreciate the humour in your post. And yes, it has made me stop and think about this a bit. That's never a bad thing .

[olderndirt]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f53xo_NNF8