What was/is your favorite airplane to fly?
Like everybody else I can't list a single choice.
Jet: Hawk T1a, best little flying sports car ever built.
Higher performance piston: Bulldog: good enough in every respect, leaving an overall combination that is a huge amount of fun.
Lower performance piston: Grumman AA5 (just a great little tourer, nothing faintly glamorous about it)
Microlight: Medway Raven; handling that is as near perfect as I've ever seen.
G
Jet: Hawk T1a, best little flying sports car ever built.
Higher performance piston: Bulldog: good enough in every respect, leaving an overall combination that is a huge amount of fun.
Lower performance piston: Grumman AA5 (just a great little tourer, nothing faintly glamorous about it)
Microlight: Medway Raven; handling that is as near perfect as I've ever seen.
G
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Jet - Hunter without tanks.
Higher performance piston - Provost.
Lower performance piston - Chipmunk.
Homebuilt - Europa (once you got it off the ground and before you needed to land it).
As near foolproof as any flying mechanical contrivance - Ballerit (a flying flea type).
Helicopter - Gazelle.
Higher performance piston - Provost.
Lower performance piston - Chipmunk.
Homebuilt - Europa (once you got it off the ground and before you needed to land it).
As near foolproof as any flying mechanical contrivance - Ballerit (a flying flea type).
Helicopter - Gazelle.
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Are sailplanes allowed?
Slingsby Petrel, (1939). Very relaxing, thermalling at 25 knots; and beautiful with it. 'God's Own Aeroplane', one of my fellow syndicate members used to call it.
Slingsby Petrel, (1939). Very relaxing, thermalling at 25 knots; and beautiful with it. 'God's Own Aeroplane', one of my fellow syndicate members used to call it.
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Quite a few have mentioned the dH Chipmunk. hardly surprising - it's far and away the best handling aeroplane I've flown. Here's me in the one I had a share in for 33 years.
Ahhh...
Higher powered piston;- Pitts S1S;- As much fun as you can have with your trousers on....!!! 
Low-powered;- A65 Cub Coupe.....so endearing, so simple and SO rewarding......!!!
Low-powered;- A65 Cub Coupe.....so endearing, so simple and SO rewarding......!!!
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Like everybody else I can't list a single choice.
1. F-104 Starfighter - Not the most funny airplane to fly at the beginning but it rewarded you more and more with experience.
2. B707-320 - In some respect similar to the 104. Not the easiest airplane to fly but, once you got to grips with it, a real sweetheart.
3. T-38 - Just easy and beautiful!
Cheers,
mad
Piston single, DHC-2 Beaver
Piston twin, Lockheed 10 and 12, particularly the 12.
Turbine, Gulfstream G159.
The DC-3 on skis was fun to fly. Unless you got it stuck in the slush. Would have loved to have gotten my hands on the Basler. Ehwatz, you lucky dog.
Piston twin, Lockheed 10 and 12, particularly the 12.
Turbine, Gulfstream G159.
The DC-3 on skis was fun to fly. Unless you got it stuck in the slush. Would have loved to have gotten my hands on the Basler. Ehwatz, you lucky dog.
My favourite? Whatever it is I'm flying tomorrow! We are all so fortunate to have experienced the unbridled joy of flight in it's many and varied forms.
Clear skies one and all
'866
(humble C208 and ASW28 driver)
Clear skies one and all
'866
(humble C208 and ASW28 driver)
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Have only flown the usual spammies for powered so can't really compete with some of the above but gliding
ASW 19 Just slid through the air like a hot knife through butter.
ASK 21 Two seat trainer but I used to love flying it solo. It ran as if on rails.
ASK 8. Would stay up with no effort at all. I remember spending half an hour or so one winter just circling around a guy's garden fire at about 1200'. Also did all my silver in an '8 so it has to be the good old 8 for me. Wonderful a/c. Have also flown the K18 which was a better performer but just not so chuckable as an 8. Light as a feather, I was 30% of it's take off weight....
ASW 19 Just slid through the air like a hot knife through butter.
ASK 21 Two seat trainer but I used to love flying it solo. It ran as if on rails.
ASK 8. Would stay up with no effort at all. I remember spending half an hour or so one winter just circling around a guy's garden fire at about 1200'. Also did all my silver in an '8 so it has to be the good old 8 for me. Wonderful a/c. Have also flown the K18 which was a better performer but just not so chuckable as an 8. Light as a feather, I was 30% of it's take off weight....
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Not many rotary wing types have been mentioned as yet so I would like to nominate the Saro Skeeter. It couldn't lift much weight, wasn't particularly fast and neither could it fly very far - but it was still a joy to fly.
Do a Hover - it avoids G
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LM
Shame - you have cropped your pic so we can't see which part of the circuit you were in. Pretty colours though - I'll give you that.
Shame - you have cropped your pic so we can't see which part of the circuit you were in. Pretty colours though - I'll give you that.
Shame - you have cropped your pic so we can't see which part of the circuit you were in.
I recall a mate bringing a Jaguar to Valley as no.2 of a pair - the leader was due to give a presentation on the Jaguar to our Gnat course.... Not long out of Valley, said mate used the normal visual circuit cues and admitted to me that he'd had to go into afterburner to persuade the buffeting pussycat around the turn onto final!
The presentation was a disaster. Despite having been warned not to do so, the lecturer pressed 'back' on the slide projector and all his slides shot out onto the floor. So he then stuffed them back into the slide carrier in any old sequence and ad-libbed as he went along... But then came the final nonsense - he tried to play some Telford camera HUD film without having asked for the Telford converter. So the whole film was 90º out and he suggested that we should lean over to watch it....
Nicest aircraft I've ever flown? Difficult to say really. Hunter 6 was nice, but had a dire fuel system and no nav kit - its power controls would have been better with Q-feel. Gnat had good nav kit, was an utter delight at low level, but twitchy in formation - it also had very little fuel, could be tricky to land and wasn't terribly reliable, so you had to know your emergency drills very well indeed. Hawk was pretty viceless, but the ones I flew had a truly woeful compass system and a primitive gunsight - they were also directionally less stable for weaponeering than the Hunter. But both issues were later sorted out though, or so I gather. But what idiot didn't specify offset TACAN??
As far as big aeroplanes go, I've only flown the Vulcan and VC10, both of which were so different that it's hard to compare them. Both were classics.
As for smaller aeroplanes, the Chipmunk was very nice indeed, as was the Bulldog with avionic upgrade. One of the nicest overall though, was probably the Jet Provost T5A.
Nastiest? That appalling heap of junk known as the Jetstream T Mk1. An utterly dreadful, poorly harmonised, overcomplicated and noisy device - ETPS said that the C-130K would make a good lead-in trainer for the wretched Jetstream!
used the normal visual circuit cues and admitted to me that he'd had to go into afterburner to persuade the buffeting pussycat around the turn onto final!
you have cropped your pic so we can't see which part of the circuit you were in.
This is a low level circuit............
Well, LM it was in the early summer of 1975 and my chum was still on the Jag OCU - so didn't have many hours on the thing.....
And he did admit to being too tight around final.
And he did admit to being too tight around final.