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Back in the Jetstream, flying over the Alps from LSMD to LIME on a variably cloudy day.

No offence intended, but your not going to get much with that budget. Getting a PPL will cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000-15,000 (depending on the hours it takes you to complete the licence). I ended up spending around $12,000 up here in Canada. Your commercial licence is where things start getting really expensive. Depending on the aircraft you intend to fly, you'll want to consider a multi-engine rating (which is ridiculously expensive), but should only take around ten hours (mine ended up costing around $5000 for ten hours). You may want to do your multi-IFR, and if you do decide to take that route, make sure you a prepared well ahead of time, because then you can do that rating in the least amount of hours, otherwise your going to spend an asinine amount of money. An all in amount for a CPL can be upwards of $50,000-$70,000+. Now, if your budget of $250,000 is separate from your training budget, you have a better chance of getting an aircraft with some capability. But, if they are combined, you may end up spending close to half of your budget (especially if your training is done in the US). Your budget realistically limits you to older airframes (which is fine, because brand new airframes are ridiculously overpriced), and you are limited to piston singles and piston twins. Which is again fine, because you've changed your expectations already. Looking on controller.com (a US/Canadian aircraft sale site), with a maximum sale price of $250,000, you can get some pretty damn nice aircraft, and at just below to just over $100,000. Your best bet, especially when/if you get your licence, would be looking in the four to six seat range, piston single or piston twins. Cessna 180/182/185/210/206 for the singles, or the 414 which is a twin, but is a lot of aircraft for a low time pilot. Piper Cherokee 6/Saratoga (although I've heard they can be a real dog with a load on), Senecas (your best bet is a Seneca III, they are generally the best for hauling larger loads, whereas the newer Seneca Vs, are designed more as IFR birds, so the additional avionics make it difficult to haul larger loads). Beech Bonanzas (plenty of beautiful older Bonnies out there), Barons (piston twin, pretty capable). The best advice I've heard is, stay below your maximum budget when buying, that way you've got room to make upgrades as necessary, maintenance, insurance (which will be high for a low time pilot, best bet is to stay away from twins until you've got more hours), hangarage, etc... As for your ideal aircraft if money were no object, the Piaggio, there's a reason why there aren't many around, they are awful aircraft if you are trying to haul any sort of load. If they are light, they are alright...

Some cockpit seats!

Cessna CT206H Stationair (by Carenado) First Flight in Stewart (CZST) (Canada) (by Beti-X) I hope you like

Not to extend the discussion -- or dispute the point, which is a good one in general -- but since I'm kind of an anal IT nerd who's worked with such things in his career in the past: I believe that on any modern browser you wouldn't have a double download, at least if the images are on the same page. (I don't care enough to open the debug console in Chrome and trace it while I'm at work. ) Even if they're spread across pages, if you load one, and then the next, as long as the web server presenting the data handles last-modified times correctly, your browser should send its request with an "If-Modified-Since" HTTP header and be told by the remote server with a response code 304 that the file hasn't changed and it should use its local cache. But enough of that... back to the airplane porn! Edit: OK, I lied. I opened Chrome's developer console and tested both cases. Reloading the page with my original post and the quoted post only showed one request to imgur for each picture, and each time I properly got a 304 Not Modified response. With a cleared cache and another reload, there was a request with no modification time and a 200 response, but again no second request -- the browser properly presented the same resource both times without redownloading. Regardless, those are just technical details. I'll stop being a nerd now. Sorry!

Hey, you can see my house from there! Well, not quite, but you appear to be flying right over the building in which I work.

Just installe and tested them... amazing!!!!! See yourself :-)

Yep thought so, when I ran my own forum I wanted to make sure it wouldn't make another request before implementing certain rules for users of the forum. Thanks for proving a point nonetheless. Back to the airplanes... Dassault Rafale over Tahiti

Oh hey, I thought I had that in my signature here, but I guess I didn't. I've added that. But to reply directly, I'm running an i7-3770k overclocked to 4.4GHz (water-cooled), a factory-overclocked 4GB GTX 770 (I don't recall the overclock factor, but it's not all that much), and 16GB of nothing fancy RAM. X-Plane data is stored on an SSD; I just upgraded to a 512GB Crucial MX100. I have two monitors, but I only run X-Plane on one, with the other reserved for EFASS full-screen. I'd like to increase my monitor count, but I like my pretties more than I need the additional real-estate, and I can't afford to upgrade to the monster card it would take to run the simulator across multiple panels with that level of detail.

Why people needs to Quote the Screenshots ? Its not more easy and Forum friendly ask, Mr kaosfere What are your systems specs for the screenshots in your post No. 4754 ? Of course Mr kaosfere screenshots are great but we dont need to see them again 2 post behind. Carlos Garcia

As I said, there are plenty of six seat aircraft out there, but very few of them will be able to haul full fuel and have all six seats occupied. Your best bet is to get something with a few extra seats, say eight, as in a King Air C90, or the PC-12 which can be up to nine seats, would be best, but turboprops are expensive to get into, versus piston twins. That way you have a better chance of being able to haul six people with plenty of fuel. As for four seat aircraft, the same sort of issues come in, a 172 can haul four people, but generally never at full fuel. The same goes for the Cherokee or Warrior, four seats, but generally never full tanks/people. If you want to carry four people and lots of fuel, a six seat plane would be ideal (as odd as that sounds). If you want to carry six people, eight seats, etc... Of course, this will all depend on the actual aircraft, taking into consideration the weight and balance limitations, aircraft weight, etc. Passenger weights are also very important, if you want to haul around "larger" people, your going to need a bigger plane. Six lightweights, well, you might be able to get away with it. I do have to ask though, what are you looking to do with this information? Are you looking to purchase an aircraft?

For those interested, we set up a FAQ blog on the website. http://ixeg.net/blog/item/39-faq M

How on earth can you compare the WIP shots to those that the original thread starter posted? I'm not even seeing a close resemblance... Read the forums and you'll quickly learn you are almost alone with that thought. Sounds like P3D or FS X is calling your name. Really though, Valentin. You have a pretty negative tone in almost all of your posts (no matter the subject) all the time. A change in your way of speaking would be a breath of fresh air.

I'm sorry, I hope I didn't cause you too much emotional grief because I made one post asking about his screenshots.