Back in the days when you flew a 'real' plane

[Wally Mk2]

"Charlie X-ray" enjoyr rendition of the old Heron, thanks
Never had the pleasure of them but did fly it's smaller bro, the DH104 Dove. Same deal though. Ergonomics was a word of the future back then. You could fly that plane all day using rudder & the very sensitive elev trim wheel, fun too.
I recall one day turning up at Phillip Is on a 'Duck run" with Jap tourists & found the AD was fogged in but after circling round the drome a bit at 500 ft in clear skies I found a clear patch at the very end of the smaller cross strip & landed on the piano keys right on the stall 60 kts & pulled up just b4 the fog bank started.Try that with a 4 tonne plane of modern design:-)

Old late 70's model Lear was fun, no Alt capture & going up at a ROC that could only be guessed meant one started to nose over at 2000' to go

................."flying was fun Lou, it really was".........."you took real pride in just getting there"............anyone recall who said that in a famous Movie?

Such days are long gone, progress I guess


Wmk2

[Old but not bold]

Well written Harley, spot on, 45 years on the 140 does little for me other that that first solo, many different types flown since then including many real one's, Chippies,170's and 80's, Super Cubs and Beaver Amphibs and as mentioned earlier the delightful DC9 all with their own character, cheers.

[Howard Hughes]

Now you're just showing off DBTW! Where is the green with envy smilie?

PS: I still fly a 'real' airplane, it was designed before I was born!

[dhavillandpilot]

My first twin a Lockheed 12A. 120 hours TT and as green as you could be. Every start required you to have a third person at the starting engine with the fire bottle - those were the days.

Second choice was the DHC-1 the cheapest and best performing aerobatic aircraft you could own. You felt like you were over the channel dog fighting Me109's. And even when the engine stopped she performed beautifully with a forced landing on Frankston Golf course. The day - Wednesday which was Ladies day - best lunch and attention you could ever get when you are 25 and all the ladies were in their 40's.

Last choice was the Riley Heron. An aircraft that forgave mistakes, kept you wet and cold during winter - but just kept going and going.

[Old Fella]

Best aeroplane

Surely there is someone out there that has the venerable Lockheed C130 on their list of favourite aeroplanes to have flown. At home in any environment from the tropics through deserts to frozen sea runways. Over fifty years of operation by the RAAF, exceeded only by the USAF, and for the RAAF never a hull loss or even a major accident. Gotta be the Lockheed Legend for me. But I'm only a retired F/E so I guess my opinion does not count.

[Tmbstory]

Real

Old Fella:

I agree with you, the L382 Hercules that I was lucky enough to fly was a real lady of the sky.

There are plenty of others in the same category, the Chipmunk, Falcon 20 / 10, Cessna 310 B. The one that I would have liked to have flown was the P51 Mustang but it did not happen.

regards

Tmb

[HarleyD]

dehavilland pilot :

Hear Hear!! How could I have left the Lockhheed 12 off the list!! I flew one only a little but it was right up there. it was a REAL aeroplane, well a real airplane I guess, considering its heritage. The one I flew was totally original, the exception being a single becker VHF in a standard instrument hole and the TXPDR under the dash almost out of sight.

fancy that, I wonder what others i have forgotten, must be CRAFT setting in

HD ( an anagram of DH)

[Tee Emm]

the Drover had the smells and atmosphere

You want an aircraft with `the smell`? I'll give you an aircraft with the smell.

'Twas in 1966 and a group of RAAF pilots arrived in England to undertake a conversion on the HS 748 for the VIP squadron in Canberra. We spent several weeks at the Avro factory at Woodford in Cheshire, surely one of the most picturesque among the many beautifully located aerodromes in England. We were shown through one of the large hangars where Nimrods and the kneeling undercarriage military RAF version of the 748 were being serviced. The aircraft was called an Andover.

The two RAAF HS 748's were still being put together so we were given permission to look through an RAF Andover in the hangar adjoining the test pilots offices. Now, there is an expression "to sniff the air". We had little choice. The air stank to high heaven in that hangar getting worse as we neared the Andover. The Poms had a reputation for not washing too much but this was something else. And there were people working in and around the Andover seemingly oblivious to the stink. The culprit was an un-emptied **** can inside the fuselage.

The RAF had flown that Andover into Woodford for servicing some weeks earlier but without first having the good manners and decency to dump the contents of the can. God knows how long it had been in that condition before it arrived at Woodford. No air conditioning in those old wartime hangars and the warm weather did the rest.

The workers unions refused to allow their members to clean out the crap can and the management were afraid of the unions who were very militant and would down tools for the slightest reason. The RAF said get nicked we are paying Avro's to service the aircraft and that includes dumping the contents of the can and fumigating it.

The impasse stayed for weeks and all the time the smell got worse. So we (the RAAF pilots) jacked up and refused to go anywhere near that accursed Andover to practice our cockpit checks.

Now that was 45 years ago and the memory of that appalling smell still curls my nose.

[B190]

Douglas DC8 lovely Beast

[Yobbo]

BAC 1-11 . superb handling and flying
B-767. the old mans aeroplane
C-46 .sorted the men from the boys

[jas24zzk]

C'mon Tee Emm,
we all know the pommes hide their money under the soap....surely the can story was just to hide the truth

Aeroplanes that have the smell of being 'real', I'd have to go the ES-52 kookaburra then. It would forgive everything except poor circuit planning

I was lucky enough to train on the Mk4...if you got your cicruit wrong in the better sense you could push the nose over, pop the brakes and bob's your uncle. (Vne 118 knots, airbrakes available at that speed, and powerfull enough to slow it to about 85 knots in the vertical descent lol)

Schneider ES-52 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Picture here..not postable.

Circa 1959: Navy Kookaburra ES-52 glider awaiting launch from Runway 21 at RANAS Nowra, HMAS Albatross - Photo Kimberley Dunstan RAN 1958-67. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[Pinky the pilot]

ES-52 MkIV kookaburra

Trained on them myself. Ist solo, 17th January 1970. Still remember the smell.

[Delta_Foxtrot]

DHC4 de Havilland Canada Caribou

Ahhh, the Caribou. A 4,000 airframe-hour 'throwaway' design we managed to operate for nearly 20,000 hrs per frame (two made it and a few more were close behind). I did four years as a loady then went back to fly and instruct on it some years later. Didn't appreciate the engine failures (four in four consecutive months at one stage and a total of about eleven as a driver), but there was something magic in teaching a recently graduated RAAF pilot the fine art of operating a 28,500 lb aircraft into short and slopey ag strips in the Hunter Valley.
Flogging around the highlands in PNG and Irian Jaya (as it was) was another highlight.
Having a 2,000lb platform dragged out the back by an extraction chute while flying along a DZ at 4 ft wheel height was good too - especially with the trees looming larger as you waited for the chute to open...
Throwing flares out the back for a flight of Mirages to shoot at with Sidewinder and Matra (yes, the flares had chaff)...
It didn't get anywhere in a hurry, but you sure had a good time getting there! A former CO of 38SQN once described the Caribou as the best stick and rudder trainer the RAAF ever had and I heartily agree with him. Memories...

[Wiley]

Surely there is someone out there that has the venerable Lockheed C130 on their list of favourite aeroplanes to have flown.

I could have sworn I saw someone commenting on the Herc very early in this thread, but it's gone now, so let me repeat what the now missing post said. The real 'dream machine' was the C130-A. The Herc shared one thing with the MG line - they stopped making sports cars after the 'A'.

It was a lovely, lovely aeroplane, made even more magic for me thanks to a fortunate accident of incredibly good timing on my part - I just happened to arrive on the squadron as a teenage boggie straight off pilots course not long after they changed policy and allowed first tour co-pilots a chance at a command slot on that first tour - after achieving 1000 hours total flying time (which equated to just under 800 hours on type) if you made the grade.

Captain of a C130 at 21 years of age, sometimes with a nav and a co-pilot even younger that that, (although the loadies and flight engineers were never so young)... where else but Ronnie RAAF could you get to do something like that? And, as someone has already pointed out, despite the youth and inexperience of many of its Herc captains, the RAAF holds a unique record - in over 50 years of Herc ops, they haven't lost one yet or ever had a major accident.

And it isn't as if those ops have been conducted on straightforward airways between established airports. The Hercs did (and still do) a little bit of everything, from long range (for a Herc) international services to marginal - and I mean marginal - strips in the highlands of Papua New Guinea; ops into war zones - (some unusual ones; one 37 Sqn E model took a hit from groundfire - a .303 bullet hole in its elevator, while doing night circuits at Laverton, Victoria) - with, for the A Models in my day, aerial delivery and paratrooping thrown in. I even got to land one on an unprepared paddock near Singleton when the 'wheels' on the squadron missed the fact that that was involved when they crewed the task and put a boggie captain on the (weekend) trip. Serious good fun!

I've been extraordiarily lucky in some of the aeroplanes I've flown since I left Hercs, but for me, the Herc is still the top of the tree for fun and utility.

[Arnold E]

Recently flew one of the new "carbon cubs", do yourself a favour and have a go in one, almost as much fun as you can have with your pants on.

[Gundog01]

DHC-4 Caribou. Never get any where quickly but you don't want to flying such a great aircraft. Missing it after moving to something more modern.

"Boost Pumps Normal, Mixtures Rich, Props 2000"

[Tankengine]

Open cockpit Grumman Ag-Cat doing joy-flights at the Gold coast was fun!
Jakobs radial, biplane taildragger with handling better than it's looks would suggest and one of the easiest taildraggers I have ever flown!

Old CCK ended up on floats later on.

[Hahn]

For me: Aeronca AC 7, PA 18 @ 180 hp and MD 83. 18 patterns in 1 hour 6 minutes in the jet, that was the best fun in that category so far. Plus the good old Ka 6 Cr glider of cause.

[tinpis]

Fun? Pants on? Mix in some good ol PNG weather...

[BULLDOG 248]

Tankengine and tinpis.... As the song goes.... I'm a Simple Man.....
Add that turbine to CCK on floats..... or Floats to the Pilatus and add backpackers and PNG weather and we are all in HOG HEAVEN.....