Apologies for initiating the trident thread drift, a plane which to my mind was definitely not ugly, in fact rather elegant and stylish . I too always thought Blackburn aircraft were astonishingly ungainly , even the Roc and Skua which look vaguely normal had to have back to front sloping windshields, I seem to recall the legendary Eric Brown who must have come across their earlier products being slightly alarmed at his first sight of a Baracuda . They also seemed to have somehow survived despite most of their efforts not just being ugly but not actually any good Rocs/Skua, Bothas etc to name a few altho I suppose they redeemed themselves at the very end of their existence with the tough menacing looking and apparently highly effective Buccaneer. A really brilliant thread overall with some truly startling ideas perhaps the caterpillar tracked B36 main gear being the most extraordinary.
PB

Austers had a couple of other oddities
Pantos. ..like short ski , to land on water and slide up to stop on the beach. Could be fun if yr judgement of distances was out, loss of lift on the water landing and subside into the surf.
Not enough distance/ lift off the beach...subside into the surf. Can’t understand why this fun idea never caught on.

And a tank track like arrangement, but very light weight build, for landing on soft or rough ground .
Cant remember if it was this odd job that had the ability to offset for drift.

Austers hopefully are forever..the normal ones. 9.5 out of 10 for the aircraft. 0.5 / 10 for the crappy cable operated shoe brakes.

For completely over-the-top complication, I offer the C-5–it rotates, it folds on retraction, reverses to extend, then, on the ground kneels forward, level and aft.

Oh, I forgot, in earlier times, it twisted all four paws to manage crosswinds, but even at USAF budgets it got too much to maintain or work correctly.

So a few more WTF LG’s

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....aa6492c35.jpeg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0afe8189f.jpeg

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3b8cc49d9.jpeg

Goose!
 

The Grumman Goose flying boats have cool retractable wing pontoons so you can dip one ring down to clear the other wing over a dock

My contribution, the F82


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d5bcb05c2.jpeg

That's an aftermarket mod, original Geese did not have that option. It makes for a useful docking method, I will admit that.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a93a46b839.jpg

The McKinnon conversions have retractable floats.

Then again, there was always the option of no wheels at all. Winkle Brown’s book details the trials he carried out with a Vampire landing onto a flexible rubber mat , wheels up. All leading towards landing on a carrier to save the weight and complexity of an u/c capable of absorbing the stresses of carrier ops. I wonder why it never caught on!

It does seem a bit daft that they went to all the expense of building the test infrastructure, and testing it, without a single person asking how they were supposed to move the aeroplane after it had landed.

I know it's not exactly unusual configuration, but it's certainly unusual.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...xible_nose.png

It's not the picture I was looking for, or even necessarily the right aeroplane. I've seen a picture somewhere of somebody looking at a wheel about 8' diameter which is the only remaining part of whichever aircraft it was.

The General Aircraft Monospar variant (ST.25u?) with a tricycle undercarriage was pretty ungainly

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....83b3950c3e.jpg

Thanks, I'll go and read up on them :ok:

Following flying boat links down the usual YouTube rabbit hole ... when they taxied from the tarmac to water - when did they raise the wheels? In one clip, showing part of the dials and indicators, there was a pull-type knob with the clearly stated lable that I'll just leave here: PULL FOR QUICK ERECT.

TSR2. Unfair, I know, but it was still distinctly odd looking even when it did work properly!

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4e0b66370.jpeg

Were you perhaps thinking of the picture in this thread of a wheel from the Beardmore Inflexible?
Beardmore Inflexible Wheel

That's not an undercarriage, that's a Zimmer frame.

DHFan
I knew there was another image I had seen that matched your description, and it is this:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a53bfc5a27.jpg
From the Mannesman Giant Triplane
The wheel is now at Duxford, and looks like this
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....eb03be25bb.jpg

I had a memory of seeing this in James Gilbert's The World's Worst Aircraft (1975, one of the earliest and best books with that title); that memory must have been from maybe 30 years ago, but climbing up a ladder to the top shelf my bookshelves, there it was.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....801dbc2cc.jpeg
If you are going to experiment with fuselage arrangement, engine configuration and pioneer mono-wing, you might as well chuck in landing gear Bleriot 125....it didn’t fly that well

You beat me to it FP! My reference was Haddow and Grosz's German Giants ( R Planes) Putnam where I must admit I had remembered it as the :Poll Giant Triplane.