Noisy pusher
 

Saw and heard a very noisy aircraft overhead today. It was probably going into Luton. It was about the size of a small business jet but had pusher props and canards.
Any ideas?

Piaggio P180.

Excellent aircraft.

Thank you. Just looked it up. Most unusual a/c

Not the first unusual business aircraft from Piaggio. In the 1960's United Steel Co operated a big gull-wing pusher aircraft, the P166, out of its' various airstrips at steelworks sites such as Scunthorpe and Workington, and Coal Aston (EGCA) near Sheffield. Before the real development of the motorway network!

Here is a photo of G-APXK :http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1084632/

As a youngster used to hike up to the top of the hill near where I lived to see G-APXK at Coal Aston. Challenging 'strip with a big aircraft. Trees on the approach, and unless you got down on the numbers, around you went in this beastie!

Happy days...

EGCA

Hmm
 

Unless it was the Beech Starship, a very similar config, by Rutan, and very noisy for a turbo prop. (Harmonics, composite)

Airfoil

Doubtful it was a Starship, according to Wikipedia only five remain flying and all of those are in the USA. Rather a shame really, it was a very elegant looking aircraft in my opinion.

P166 used to make a terrible racket, by far the noisiest aircraft of its size. Is noise a feature of pushers, or just Piaggios?

All pushers seem noisy to me - I've always assumed it to be the disturbed airflow form the airframe going through the prop disc.

The Cessna 337 seemed particularly noisy presumably because of the front engine's prop wash also going through the rear prop! Never heard the similarly configured Rutan Defiant, Dornier 335 or Moynet Jupiter in the air so are/were they the same?

Can remember seeing Marconi's P166 G-APWY around and about - now in the Science Museum at Wroughton and hearing (and then seeing!) a blue P180 rather more recently.

Dizzy Piaggio P-180 Avanti
 

hi D-IZZY

http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/search/phot...ry=truePiaggio

In and out of many UK Air fields very Regular and D-IZZY in \out of FAB today

TONY

The Avanti makes a very distinctive sound, sort of a banshee type screaming noise when it flies over. They're nice, straight forward flying airplanes, and very quiet inside...not at all like they are on the outside. In flight they're quiet enough, in fact, that you can hold a conversation without raising your voice, and people in the cabin can sometimes hear what the crewmembers are saying to each other.

I flew the Avanti for a thousand hours or so, and quite liked the airplane. It's roughly comparable to a King Air 200, but bigger inside, climbs all the way up to and flies comfortably at 41,000', and cruises at 370-395 knots for the same fuel burn as the King Air. It's a goofy looking airplane, like a flying egg with backward engines and three wings (it's a forward wing, not a canard...Piaggio is very big on making that distinction).

Before I started flying the Piaggio I was living near the approach end of a runway at Las Vegas (USA), and would hear the Piaggios coming and going all the time. I could always tell, from inside my apartment, when the Piaggio was coming. It always sounded like it was going to fly in my door, sounded just a little angry. For all their goofiness and funny sound, they perform and function quite well.

Early P166
 

Sir Robert Macalpine (big civil engineers) had one around 1959. I watched them using ex RAF Bradwell Bay when they were building Bradwell nuclear power station. Yes, they were noisy. Was not one version rather delightfully named 'Portofino' ?

Yes indeed, the Piaggio P166-B was the "Portofino".

(No doubt named after the place where Wayne has just tied the knot.)

Another business twin from the early 1960's seen at EGCA was the Beech 65 Queen Air of Davy-Ashmore. G-ARFF

EGCA

Hughie Green had one too.

I agree, noisiest I ever heard was the B-36, it made the ground shake.

The P 166 also had variable pitch props, so you knew when it was in the circuit at EGCA, because you heard the engine noise go up an octave when fine pitch selected. ( or t'other way round, sorry not a tekkie...)

Big engines and cheap cheap fuel....those were the days.

EGCA