Small Jet - Hawk

I'll never forget a certain Kiwi teaching me how to tailslide one on my acceptance ride at Tac Weapons. Great machine loads of fun and good old fashioned ACM, bounced SAPs, strafing and bombing.

Big Jet - Nimrod

Lovely aircraft to handle. 200' day/300' night 60 degree's angle of dangle at 500'. A real sense of achievment and teamwork hunting a sub especially when things went active and you were throwing it around trying to achieve attack tracks and great to have helped rescue a few people and to have assisted those heroic SAR helicopter crews

Commercial - B737 NG

The 320 is better day in day out, its more comfortable and a breeze for NPA's but if I want to fly and keep my flying skills sharp(ish) its the 73 every time.

Hands down, G-III (DC variant). I like steam gauges and it performed better than the G-IV at low altitudes.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the DHC-2 yet. So much fun, especially on floats. Lighter on the controls than a 206 or 185, taller than the majority of regional turbo props on amphibs and the sound of that R985 rumbling along...

Learjet 35 for the challenge

Falcon 2000 for lovely handling

Gulfstream V/550 for its incredible versatility

Maybe we need to define when we started and when we stopped, otherwise we'll have post like this -

Thomas Selfridge - great handling, great thrust to weight. A dream to fly as long as you keep your speed up.

1974 - present

Ashling - you summed up the Nimrod beautifully, but when did the minimum height at night become 300' ? It was 200' in my time. ( 1970 -80 )

Thanks, I was a decade or so after you so I guess the rules changed. That or my memory was fried by sitting above the radar .........

Wouldn't that be something else fried earlier?

Sea Fury, L749, Concorde.

SR71.

I was very lucky to get my hands on one and spent seveal years marvelling at its handling qualties and sheer presence. i will alway be grateful to Airfix for that and my Mum hanging it from the ceiling.
Cheers

My loved plane is Fokker 27 mark 50.be i am lic.mechanic with rating B1 since 2003.

B-707 First and only love

Then 737 Classic

Now 320 Tamagoci

100

UH 1 & S-58 helicopters

Fokker 50 for being brilliantly simple and yet a workhorse;
Fokker 100 for it's fabulously light handling, nice flight deck, and ECAM;
Boeing 737 for it's reliability and honesty;
De Havilland Dove for being a true pilot's aircraft (my all-time favourite);
Gazelle for showing me that rotary-wing flying can deliver on it's promises and doesn't have to be a chore;
PA-31 for taking me and my friends/passengers/family where we wanted to go at reasonable cost;
BN Islander for breaking all the rules and unbelievable field performance;
ATR72 for showing me how systems design shouldn't be done, but can be overcome, and convincing me that landing gear doesn't belong in sponsons;
Beech Baron for showing me that quality costs and pays;
CitationJets for being fun little machines (but I'd still buy a King Air 350!).

I could go on... It's been fun!

The S-210 Caravelle

Favourite homebuilt: Rutan VariEze-Very different and very special.

Favourite production light aircraft: Robin DR400-Enjoyed every minute I've spent in these beautifully constructed aircraft.

Favourite small jet: Hawk T1-So simple to operate, a real flying sports car.

Favourite short-haul airliner: B757-It would also cross The Atlantic with ease!

Favourite long-haul airliner: B744-So capable and just so right.

There are times in life when there is absolutely no competition whatsoever........................

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u..._Loop640-2.jpg

...and there are people in life whose fortune and ability have favoured them. Well done LM, and thanks for the lovely picture.

I thank the Lightning for two things: great childhood memories of watching them in the sky, and early adult memories of a certain simulator and a certain TRE whose hearing was so bad (a consequence of his many hours in the Lightning et al) that we, in the front, could converse normally without him being aware. A true gent and a lovely trainer, also known for his 'raw data days' on the line. What a shame these times are past; aviators are not what they were...

These are not in the same class as the Frightening!

For Handling: Chipmunk

For Predictablity: BN Islander - it never let you down in foul conditions

For Unpredicability: All Austers

I have no idea how I previously missed this thread, but my timing is great. I flew this today and I'll never forget that half hour.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...31at000824.png

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

LM. I just knew it was going to appear at some point!!. [Jealous]

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.

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.

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.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...nG-BCSLres.jpg

Ahhh...
 

Higher powered piston;- Pitts S1S;- As much fun as you can have with your trousers on....!!! :ok:
Low-powered;- A65 Cub Coupe.....so endearing, so simple and SO rewarding......!!! :ok:

same here. This is my list in order of preference

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.:ok:

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)

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1...ataf241210.jpg

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i1...s/asw28866.jpg

Another vote for the Chipmunk

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/c...wz860wk638.jpg

Laurence

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....

I can't believe we're on p6 without it having being mentioned!

Best heavy - DC-10-30
Best medium - DC-9-32
Best light - DHC1

Worst - or "least satisfying" : A320

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.

And didn't the Skeeter have a dH Gipsy Major engine, like the dHC1?

G-VTOL then XA890

I'll raise you John.....:)

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u...9/1913_800.jpg

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.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...arnborough.jpg

Top banter, JF!

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!

Wot a load of garbage!!!!! Suggest he was an imposter............

John - I'm sure the subtlety of that comment will be lost on many........:ok:

This is a low level circuit............

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u...JaguarLL-1.jpg

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.