I’ve been amused by the names of some of the aircraft models I’ve seen lately. Among them:
Pitts S-12 Macho Stinker
De Havilland DH80 Puss Moth
R & B Bearhawk Patrol
Silence Twister
Murphy Moose
Any others come to your mind?
I’ve seen the Macho Stinker, but I think the others there are all new to me! The DHC Caribou and Turbo Caribou are fun to me.
Correction: I’ve caught that Bearhawk as well.
Correction to my correction: I’ve also apparently caught the Moose, too… both versions!
One of them might be a married couple in a moose suit; that’s an easy mistake to make.
Here’s a post I just made about some real-world rare planespotting. Which made me think to ask you folks how SkyCards rates the rarity of the EMB-120. It won’t be onesy-twosy rare, but it might be couple-dozen rare.
Embraer Brasilia is marked Rare (orange) at 6.08. This is similar to the Dassault Falcon 50 at 6.59 or the British Aerospace Jetstream 32 (I haven’t captured so I’m not sure of it’s rating). The Boeing MD-87 is Ultra (red) at 8.57.
Those all seem pretty rare to me for commercial flights.
My upgraded week is now over. Final count, unless I forgot to record some, my final tally is
26 new aircraft
155 new airports
67 new fleets
42 cards upgraded to gold
10 cards upgraded to platinum
3 cards upgraded to cyber
I thought I was going to get one more card over the line to cyber, but I didn’t quite make it. Insane week, and I’m officially burned out on the game now. Time to delete it from my phone for a bit.
J31/J32’s are likewise something I’ve not seen in years that were ubiquitous early in my career. That same Sunrise Airways ostensibly has 3 of them, but once a fleet gets that small it’s real easy for that to be “3 we hope to fly again someday once we can locate some cheap enough replacement parts for the [whatever] that keeps breaking on every plane in everyone’s fleet. You know, the part last made in 1987.”
MD87s. Another oddball. MD-80 avionics on the shorter DC-9-50 airframe. 75 produced, and most went to an early grave. I’d really wonder whether there’s more than a couple in e.g. African freight service these days.
This cite McDonnell Douglas MD-87 Production List | Planespotters.net suggests (without an “as of” date) that 14 are still in use. 7 of which are Erickson fire bombers based in California, and three of which are a fleet of 1 in 3 different Iranian airlines. The other 4 are two corporate and 2 governmental. Again fleets of 1 which tend to become fleets of zero no-notice.
A rare bird for sure, other than hanging around McClellan Field in northern CA in fire season. My own bet is Erickson’s 7 are the last of them actually airworthy.
What a coincidence. I noticed a bunch of MD-87s tonight out west near Oregon. I couldn’t figure out why they were all there and grouped up. Then I read your post and that’s exactly it. They’re all for Erickson Aero Tanker. Same again for all of the British Aerospace BAE-146-200 in the area. I should have figured that out because I already noticed all of the helicopters over the wildfires.
FWIW, I did see an MD-87 down in the Caribbean this morning when I was looking for the EMB Brasila. Based on your link above it is the one owned by Bernstein Equity Partners.
I’ve spent the last two weeks going for quantity more than quality. I had Dallas/Ft. Worth this week, and caught every new airliner I could. Managed to get the airline fleet trophies for American and Southwest, and I’m close on United and Delta. I also popped up to Osh Kosh for some rarities. I caught a flight to the Faroe Islands that gave me the last European flag carrier. One particularly fruitful trip to Warsaw got me three new countries and three new rare planes.
aircraft 741
airports 1009
fleets 481
4 European countries left, but they’re going to be tough. 29 rare planes for that trophy, and 3 long haul flights.
Haven’t decided yet what to do for the coming week. I have lots of airports and countries to collect in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and Africa.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you just start playing this game when you saw this thread a month and a half ago or whatever it’s been? You, my friend, have been on an absolute tear with it if you’ve managed to get those kinds of stats in that timeframe!
I was assessing my progress in certain stats in the game and found something that I thought was interesting. At this point, I’ve caught almost 94% of the E175 Long Wings listed in the game, 605 out of 647. Of the 42 left to find, 6 belong to American Airlines, 15 to United, 5 to Delta, 7 to Alaska, 3 to Nigerian operators Peace Air and Overland, 2 to Star Air in India, and 1 to the Royal Oman Police.
That leaves 3 that will be tougher to track down. I learned about another utility website called skystats.win that may be able to help me out, but it’s crazy to be able to kinda sorta, if I squint, see the finish line on entire aircraft fleet of this size.
I’m in the same ballpark:
770 aircraft
1170 airports
Based on Bomtek’s post above I checked on the Delta fleet trophy, and holy cow I’m not even close by any measure, like some hundreds away, and I’m in Atlanta. However, it’s never been my focus, which has always been gaining models and airports (and as a byproduct, countries).
After Oshkosh I’m definitely in need of be very casual for a week or two.
Too much time on my hands, and maybe a bit of an addictive personality.
Also kinda focusing on a few goals at a time. I had DFW for the last week, so I just ignored the small planes, clicked on the airliners, and caught anything I hadn’t caught before. It being DFW, that was mostly American and Southwest. The new planes tapered off, but never completely ended. I’m over 1100 American planes now.
I caught a flight from London to Gibraltar, so I’m down to 3 European countries, now. Monaco only has a heliport, and I don’t know if there are any scheduled flights there.
I’ll focus on something else next week. Haven’t decided what.
I was reading on the Skycards Discord server about the “Monaco Method” for catching flights to little airports. I’m not exactly sure how it works, as I’ve never done it, but it has something to do with with “grabbing” a flight with your cursor and waiting for it to land before capturing it. Somehow, there’s a trick that allows you to “get” that airport even if the flight in question has not filed that airport as its destination.
Oshkosh was fun, but I didn’t go “all-in” on it. Picked up a nice collection of rare aircraft, and I’m happy with that.
Just picked up my American All-Star trophy. Had two States left this am, DE and SD. For both of those, I had to “cheat” a little and look up en-route flights on Flightradar and travel to an airport in range to grab them. Next up, probably the Dragon trophy (China) or Uncommon Master; only two aircraft left for those that I’m surprised I haven’t found already ( Bell 407 and Cirrus SR20)
Interesting. I wouldn’t want to exploit a bug like that to pad my stats. Plus, it wouldn’t do me any good so far, anyway. I haven’t seen any helicopters headed for Monaco, whether they have that as their filed destination or not.
Last week I had an airport in southern England, which seemed a likely starting point for flights to the Faroe Islands and Gibraltar. I looked up flights from London to those destinations, found out when they were taking off, and caught them soon after.
This week I have San Francisco International. I’m hoping to finish the Tulip trophy, or at least get close. Looks promising so far. I also have the Gustaf III airport at St. Barts (which is rather infamous). I think that the travel cost to new airports is lower if you have free access to one nearby. I’m hoping to get the remaining Caribbean countries this week.
I need more airports, countries, and fleets in Central and South America, and in Africa. I haven’t decided the best place to get those, maybe Mexico City or Panama, and possibly Cairo.
I haven’t had much luck with the battles (5 coins). I’ve had a fair amount of ties that I lose due to the XP tie breaker.
Is it just hard to win for new players?
I wouldn’t call it a bug. If a flight doesn’t file their arrival in their ADSB (common with GA aircraft, helicopters, and private jets) Flightradar24 will add it when they land at the airport. By selecting a flight that you are pretty sure is going there and keeping it selected, the destination will pop up when it lands. Tracking stays active for a short while after landing, so you’ll be able to capture it with destination active during that short period.
Searching on Reddit, I see now that this is the case; battles are useless for new players.
See post 137 in this very thread.
There are people who have either sunk a lot of real money into this game, cheated their way to the top, or both, and you will see the same names vying for the top spots on the battles leaderboard every week.
If you like to play battles, but aren’t one of those leader-types, one of the best things you can do is bet 0 coins. You’ll still get to enjoy the thrill of trying to outwit your opponent, but there is little in the way of consequence.