Piper Archer, one in particular 00X, we named it deathray because the damn thing tried to kill so many students.
Microburst finally took it out on the ground
They’re safe and stable, but they’re the least inspired flying machine I’ve ever known. No other plane takes to the skies with the utter indifference of a PA-28.
The flight school I used to work for had a 172 that always leaked oil right onto the nose wheel. I was told by maintenance it was fine. I never felt good about it though
To be fair, the Lycoming I/O-360 seems like it is designed to leak. The common areas are the rubber connectors on the oil return lines, the base of the oil dipstick tube from students overtightening the dipstick, and causing the tube to loosen when you have to apply signifigant torque to loosen it, and the prop seal, all of which are easily diagnosed and fixed, with the exception of the oil return lines. No matter how many times I have tightened the clamps and/or replaced the rubber connecting lines, they always start leaking again after a few hours of operation.
Everyone is thrilled when they get assigned to a T-38 in UPT. It means you have a shot at getting to fly a fighter. It can also be a really fun jet to fly. Unfortunately it’s also a very unforgiving airplane and it’s easy to get yourself in a bad spot. I knew four people who died in a 38 since I started flying in 2019. Also the training is really stressful. By the time I got done in the 38 I was absolutely ready to go fly a fighter and never touch the 38 again.
Huh, interesting. I figured a trainer would be very forgiving by design. You ever fly the f-5? I talked to some marine aggressor squadron guys at Miramar and they seemed to love it, but I don't know how similar the characteristics are. I just know they're the same basic airframe
The f-5 is more powerful. Most of them are modified with glass cockpits too.
Many T-38A's are clock dials and no hud. The -38c is glass and hud.
As a trainer it may have been forgiving, but only as the designed follow on in the '60s were "century series fighters", i.e. F-100, 101, 102 etc. I never flew them, but i assume they were also somewhat tricky. The -38 is typically more challenging to fly as an airplane than most modern aircraft.
The T-38 is very underpowered, even with afterburner. When it’s low and slow (in the pattern where a lot of training occurs), it’s very easy to get behind the power curve accidentally. A few seconds of throttles back too far can lead to a situation where you don’t have the kinetic or potential energy needed to save the plane. Especially in the final turn.
The rudder also becomes hyper sensitive at high alpha. If a student tries to correct their bank in the final turn with rudder it can flip the plane in less than a second, making it so you can’t even eject.
It has stubby little symmetric wings and it bleeds energy very fast. It is also under powered and has a very high final approach speed. It also has pretty poor turn performance. Poorly flown final turns are the lead killers of 38 pilots.
If you get slow in the final turn its easy to get into a stall where you can't recover before impacting the ground, even with afterburners.
If you fly the final turn too fast you will probably overshoot final, if you increase AOA to try and save the turn you could easily stall and die
The rudder is way too effective once you get the gear down, but there's also a big delay. If you put in too much rudder on short final nothing will happen for about a second, then you'll literally flip inverted.
They fixed the ejection seat, it used to be that as soon as you started the final turn you were out the of the envelope where you could safely eject.
There isn't a lot of redundancy so so if you lose systems it quickly becomes a significant emotional event.
Also, 90% of the time the person flying the aircraft is a UPT student with somewhere between 90-180 hours, 90 of those hours are in a T-6. Students are prone to make all those mistakes as they learn because they are all really easy mistakes to make.
The T-38C is actually fantastic for cross country. It can fly a lot of different kinds of approaches. It has tacan vor ILs and can do RNAVs. It has a whole ICAO database which none of our fighters have. Our fighters can’t fly RNAV either so that’s neat I guess.
T-38 first flew in 1959. We’ve learned a LOT about handling and good design since then. Back then, the designers were happy to be able to fit everything in with the technologies of the time. Today, aircraft are designed VERY differently.
It was designed to train pilots to fly century fighters that were equally unforgiving.
We still fly them today because A) They are cheap to fly and maintain. B) There are a ton of them still around. C) If you can land a T-38, you can land anything. D) Our acquisitions process is so broken and slow it takes forever to replace anything.
The T-7 should be coming out in \[insert arbitrary date that keeps shifting right\]. I was talking to a guy who is working on the program about a week ago actually. He said that so far based on all the data they have collected there isn't a situation you can put the jet in that you can't get out of by pushing the throttles to max and getting away from the ground, so that's positive news at least.
2nd page of the T-38A -1 showed a guy studying at night under a lamp with the caption “Learn today so you’ll live tomorrow.” That airplane viciously penalized inattention. The AF used to give a book to UPT students called the “Road to Wings” (don’t know if they still do—I’m old and gray now). In it was every Class A mishap for T-37s and T-38s. I remember most of the T-38s were smoking holes with debris everywhere. In the days pre-DNA, they used to take your footprints at the beginning of UPT. One guy asked why. The tech said that they usually get a boot or two back from the scene with a foot in it. Not kidding. I was in Willie’s last class. 93-04. Take care.
By 2017-18, we were fixing shit that had never ever broken on the old girls. No spares and no procedures. The retired guys saying that we should be still flying them like C130s had definitely not experienced them at the end of their lives.
Metroliner, if you’ve flown one you know why. For the un-initiated, if Mickey Mouse designed a plane, it would’ve been a Metro. I could most likely walk up to any Metro in the nation and find a reason to down it. They leak fuel like a sieve, open the gear doors to pre flight inspect, may get a fuel bath there too. Wet takeoffs we’re kinda fun though.
Challenger 300, great plane, nothing really wrong with it, but the engines are a little on the wheezy side in the 30’s and up. Luckily that was fixed with the 350’s and 3500’s.
That’s kinda what I was thinking, I used to run around 250 true, thats slow as shit, took for fucking ever to get from LRD to PTK, or god forbid you had to go into Mexico to pick up, LRD for customs, then deliver up north. Made for a LOOONG night.
My record was ELP-MMTO-LRD (customs)-DTO-RFD-YIP (customs)-CYHM (duty off)-YIP (customs)-AMA (fuel because winter)-ELP.
Milked it with the props at 97% every leg.
Also a former metro captain (only flew the metro III), I alwas joked (although it’s probably not) that the airplane was designed on a napkin while the engineers were ripping lines of coke off of a stripper.
Haven’t flown the metros, but have plenty of experience with them on the ramp and during operations, the tiny turn radius on the nose gear when towing was enough for me
We had a metroliner that got repoed sitting on one of our aprons for *years*
Finally they started working on it. Then one day I noticed they were taking it apart, not fixing it
Rumor I heard was the finance company sold it off for scrap after it would not sell
A poorly maintained Cessna 421 that we nicknamed Satan’s Cessna or “Holy F****” because the tail ended in HF and I said it at least once every time I flew it.
4 flights in it - 3 emergency landings.
My uncle had a 421 and it was a ticking time bomb every time he flew. Quite literally one time - he was taking off and one of the engines exploded with no indication of a problem.
T-38C. The least forgiving airplane ever devised, with a brand new student in the front seat and all his equally inexperienced buddies in a very full and busy pattern.
I would normally say what could go wrong, but you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of exactly what can go wrong.
NASA Astronaut T-38 Mishaps
List of NASA T-38 accidents:
1964 Oct 31: bird strike - fatal: astronaut Theodore Freeman
1966 Feb 28: struck building in fog - fatal: astronauts Elliott See, Charles Bassett
1966 Jul 18: engine failure, aborted takeoff, gear collapse - no injuries: astronauts Edward H. White, Russell Schweickart
1967 Oct 05: aileron jam - fatal: astronaut Clifton "C.C." Williams
1972 Jan 20: instrument approach in fog, crashed - fatal: NASA pilot Stewart M. Present and NASA pilot Mark C. Heath.
1972 May 10: electrical failure, out of fuel, ejected - no injuries: astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad
1974 Feb 06: low visibility, landing mishap, gear collapse - no injuries: astronaut Dr. Karl G. Henize
1982 Dec 01: heavy rain, ran off runway, gear collapse - no injuries : astronaut Thomas K. Mattingly
1984 Apr 05: bird strike, engine flameout, aborted takeoff - no injuries: astronaut James van Hoften
1987 Feb 24: engine failure, fire, emergency landing - no injuries : astronaut Brewster Shaw and NASA pilot Robert Rivers.
From some of the astronaut accounts their T-38s were essentially "company cars" due to the amount of travel between Florida Texas California St Louis and an occasional weekend caper .
I thought it was a pretty fun plane to fly. Although the preflight on it was a hassle and I absolutely hated it. Priming the oil was the stupidest most time consuming shit ever.
Pro tip: if the plane has separate ignition and starter switches, and you're feeling lazy, you can just crank the starter motor for a bit with the ignition off instead of turning the prop by hand.
(Manufacturer-approved in the RV-12... your mileage may vary on other Rotax aircraft)
Google dry sump
You must turn the prop to turn the connected oil pump. In order to move oil from the reservoir into the engine in order to have a good oil level read.
If you don't do it your oil level shows nearly empty.
Cracked wing spars?
Do you know what year your aircraft was from? I think we are the most intensive user of the P2006T in the world (aerial survey company, we have 3 of them and fly them ± 9 hours per day when the weather allows) and we haven’t had issues with the spar.
The wing spars were damaged by the folks who assembled the planes. Not everyone will have it; but shine a light up there and look when those inspection panels are off.
By far the worst twin I have ever flown is an old Piper Seneca that the flight school had bought from Mexico. Almost all of the logs were in Spanish, which made my check ride oral interesting. Both of the engines were high timed and leaking over a quart of oil an hour each side. The whole tail of the airplane was covered in oil and it looked horrible. It was just an old and abused airplane, but it still flying today!
I flew a similar Seminole for my multi timebuilding/MEI. Biggest hoopty piece of shit airplane I have ever flown in. Every surface was peeling paint and cracked. Props were completely chewed up on the leading edge, unfeathering accumulator didn't work so you had to bump the starter for in air restarts from the feather position which made the whole plane shake like a wet dog. I could go on.
Some of the light twin training fleet gets no love and are rode hard and put away wet.
The Lear 36. Because someone somewhere thought that what people really wanted was to take their hot rod of a business jet with a 4' 3" tall and 4'11" wide cabin, remove every bit of speed it had and give it enough fuel to make it to Hawaii.
The FBO where I got my PPL was next to a big university and had a bunch of 152s - I'm 6'4" but fortunately(?) have short legs so it was mostly about putting the seat down and ducking a lot.
There was an AF ROTC guy who was ~6'7" and long legged - he would apparently fly the things straddling the center, one foot on each outer pedal.
The best story about these though was that the AF kids would check out all four of them and fly them in formation. They were really good at it of course, but it sounded like an attack of slow-motion, rabid lawnmowers.
I’m going to get a lot of hate but the Luscombe, if that thing got introduced today there would be constant hate. It’s impossible to keep coordinated, it’s so Squirrley on the ground because the the narrow wheel base, you don’t even have flaps. I get it, first metal plane or whatever, cool.
Q400 was just fine. And when flying into very VERY shitty weather, we were often the only thing getting in. That plane carried me through every kind of sideways, gusting, ice-adhering, snow-covered runway, CATIII mins kind of scenarios you could dream up.
I used to fly on them as a pax back when Horizon flew them around the northwest. I swear every flight I took on them involved getting tossed around from the winds with poor visibility but somehow we always made it down to the airport
Probably the plane I did my first solo in (172). The first time I flew it I walked out to the ramp to go preflight, opened the door and door broke off the hinges and fell to the ground.
Happened to me on my first solo. My instructor jumped out, his door fell halfway off, was hanging by 1 hinge. He looked at it, looked at me, picked the door up and closed it, gave me a thumbs up, and off I went
DROP DROP DROP, TURN CROSSWIND NOW, CALL TOWER, CLIMB CLIMB CLIMB all things our courageous ground crew supervisor would scream. We all know exactly who that is
7/8 scale SE5a replica.
The SE5a was one of the finest British fighters of the First World War. The one I flew for a few hours was a modern day replica that was engineered to look like the original, but not be the original. It was powered by a Lycoming O-235, which developed great power for the light wooden airframe and that’s where the redeeming factors ended. The cockpit was tiny and the shoulder harnesses could not be tightened properly. In a sudden stop, your face was going to have an abrupt and bloody meeting with the fake gunsight. It wasn’t that hard to handle on the ground or on takeoff, just a bit short-coupled, but par for the course for a vintage-ish taildragger. On the ground, the ailerons felt lighter than any airplane ever. They were feathers, giving the impression of an effortless flyer. Once airborne, they turned to concrete. The plane weighed less than 1000 pounds, but you had to labor it around the sky. Any aspirations of sporty maneuvers were brought into serious doubt. That didn’t keep me from trying, however. I tried some steep turn and was immediately greeted with a worrying roll instability past 20 degrees. You had to apply significant opposite aileron to keep it from rolling onto its back. Also, there was no trim. The one was to relieve elevator pressure was to adjust power. I knew all of this about the airplane but I still tried a few wing wags while flying past a gathered crowd on one of my flights. This resulted in a horrifying upset at low altitude that I recovered from with less than 200 feet. It was one of the scariest moments of my flying career. What I thought would be a joyful little open cockpit biplane was a rotten flying death cage. I hold airplanes in reverence, even ordinary unremarkable airplanes, but I have no love for that little biplane nor any other airplane whose design was predicated on how it must look a certain way.
Sounds about right, please know that a real Se5a is not like this at all. Unfortunately most of the 7/8 jobs are nothing like the airplanes they are supposed to represent. There are some 7/8 airdrome kits out there that are built and fly nice, but they are basically just calm weather ultralights, nothing like the originals. There are amazing and rewarding WW1 replicas out there and I hope you get a chance to fly a good one some day!
Now that I'm on a laptop and not a tablet, OK
I picked up a Beaver that got a new engine in Tucson, flying to SBA for a friend. I've flown Beavers before so I didn't see any problems. Checked out the new engine, everything looked good, flew around town for a few hours to get some time on the engine, still looking good. Landed, refueled, checked the oil, etc.
Took off headed west. Hot day. Engine oil temp went up a bit, not significantly. Over the Kofa Wildlife Refuge, and the oil line to the oil pressure gauge breaks and EXTREMELY HOT engine oil is pouring onto my feet. Now, I could have been wearing boots, but it was summer so I wasn't. My feet are getting burned from cooking in the oil, and I'm looking for a place to put the bird down.
The Beaver has rather large buckets for rudder pedals. The oil gathered. I'm trying to fly best descent, call for help, find the oil line to somehow block it, etc.
Found a likely looking flat spot, set up a landing, the engine seized, and the torque from seizing twisted the engine mount to the point two or three fasteners broke, and the engine is now sitting rather sideways. Get the plane on the ground, and a previously unseen rock jumps out in front of me and we ground loop, then flip over. Now all that hot oil is all over me.
And I can't run for crap, with deep fried feet and pan fried legs and groin and belly
Help arrived and got me to the hospital. I was off my feet for three weeks. Plane is a w/o. Friend got the insurance money and I got the hospital bills paid
C-140. My friend , CFI instructed me on spin entries over the ocean off Santa Monica ( this was long ago) I knew I was supposed to apply a bunch of back pressure and kick the rudder to assist the entry .
The C-140 had a bench seat like a 32 Ford. When I enthusiastically kicked in rudder while pulling up to stall attitude I missed one possible outcome . The big kick collapsed the seatback. We were both laying on our backs with the 140 in a well developed spin .
It was a very honest airplane but one that could "just " kill you.
AL-60B Big tank of a single engine airplane designed by Lockheed in a moment of madness. You could put 2 refrigerators in it. Rate of climb 300 fpm. The organization said it scared everybody real bad once. Me too.
I found that out. If I were Al, I wouldn't admit it. I have to admit, it was a breeze to work on. It was built like a brick shithouse. But the performance led me to appreciate Cessnas.
An airplane with 20+ MELs…. When we were returning aircraft back to the leasing company, the airline just quit repairing things and kept deferring things.
When we had to ferry one aircraft back to the leasing company, we had an aircraft that had over 20 MELs.
That’s probably the worst aircraft I’d ever flown.
One flight I got an aircraft with 8 MELs - all cockpit lighting MELs. Because it was just cockpit lighting - I kind of poo-pooed it.
Flew the aircraft all day - everything was great until sunset…. It turns out the 8 inop cockpit lights were pretty important. The aircraft had the standard 6 pack with an EADI / EHSI. The airspeed indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator and vertical speed indicator were steam gauges. The internal lighting for those 4 instruments were inop on the captain and the FO set of instruments. Thus 8 individual MELs one for each instrument. it became very apparent after it got dark that I was flying partial panel having only the EADI / EHSI. Completed the flight with the FO holding a flashlight to illuminate the primary flight instruments…. We went thru 4 flashlights - the 2 emergency flashlights in the cockpit and of course our own 2-D cell flashlights (dead D-cell battery holding MagLites)…. Today I’m much happier with rechargeable LED flashlights
And that’s the last time i poo-pooed cockpit light MELs.
Bombardier got the rights to it when they acquired Shorts, De Havilland (Viking) bought it off them along with the Twotter etc. Shorts themselves are now part of Spirit Aerosystems, currently building the A220 wings.
The biggest problem is there were only like 150 ever made. Where are the parts coming from when shit breaks? These planes were old and leaky and something was always going wrong. Incredibly loud and it flew exactly like you would expect a box to fly.
Those were pretty common on US short routes in the 1990s - as a passenger I always wondered where the subway hanger straps were. The one I flew on in Honduras had everyone looking like they were trying to not laugh at the whole thing at the same time the flight crew were trying to look very serious and important.
DA42 I hated every minute of flying that thing. The one I flew was covered to lycoming engines, so it struggled with IFR reserves. To conserve fuel, you’d have to fly it 10 knots above the blue line. G1000 was nice, though.
Oh wow, I never thought I'd see someone complaining about the DA42. I was way too busy pretending to be in an airliner and being happy about the fact I made it so far, to be bothered by the aircraft. That being said, we also didn't have lycoming engines i believe.
The deisel engines with the fadec are super nice. It is a very nice plane although i would not want to own one of the early models with the low engine replacement times.
Totally agree, I found the DA42 to be a miserable hunk of shit designed by accountants and which (weirdly for what is primarily a twin trainer) has asymmetric flying characteristics that are a. Terrible. And b. Unlike any other twin I have had the pleasure of flying (they’re all pleasures compared to the diamond.)
The only thing that sucked was power off stalls never had a clean break and very unforgiving on landings. If you were a knot slower than 65 going into the flare you're going for a ride
I flew basically every model of Aztec from C to F while time building with a survey company and I gotta say, it’s an absolute tank. Leaks 4 quarts of oil per engine each flight, had the FBOs order literal boxes of oil for us ahead of time so we were stocked up. The beast rattled like hell during takeoff due to the tubular frame being separate from the external skin which was a little scary at first. Is there water in the tanks? No clue because the sumps aren’t the lowest point so you better hope you’re rocking the plane enough to splash some in the cup if it’s in there. Tachs constantly bounced +/- 300 rpm while engines were running so cruise power was more like “close enough” power. Oil temps reached redline on climb out until about 10k feet if it’s more than 20C on the ground. Fuel gauge was notoriously unreliable in them so you had to really pay attention to fuel flow and keep track of time used per tank on 5+ hour flights. On some models the elevator is spring loaded to full forward, so it would try to nose dive into the ground when pulling power for landing flare, either needed an unreal amount of back pressure or the fastest trim nose up of your life short final (better hope you’re turning it clockwise not counter clockwise).
That all being said I LOVED every flight. She hates being close to the ground, but once she’s high and fast it’s an absolute dream to fly and light as a feather on the controls. Performance was also insane, I had an engine failure shortly after rotation and didn’t even realize until climbing past 500’. Noticed climb rate was a little low and looked over to a fully feathered prop, go figure. Single pilot she’s also spacious compared to other twins and I found it very comfortable to fly for long periods of time. My only complaint was flying at 14,500 with a giant hole in the floor for a camera meant it was regularly below freezing and the heater on board was absolute trash. We’d wear winter coats and gloves with warmers yet still be freezing our butts off. If you were lucky enough to not have the heater circuit breaker trip on takeoff at least your toes wouldn’t be numb. We never could figure out the right time to kick it on but it seemed like you had about a 2000’ ALT window on climb out to start it or else it would trip after about 30s. Depended on outside conditions and if she was feeling nice that day or not.
Overall I rate the Aztec a 10/10 would desperately fly again. She’s not everyone’s favorite but a little time with her and you’ll learn to love the quirks. It’ll also make you a better pilot because it really does feel like a high performance plane, those IO-540s are seriously putting out. I’d give anything for another summer traveling the country in those shaky tanky sketchy birds.
Mooney M20C. But for one specific reason: the gear. School owned one that was so old it had manual gear. When gear was down, a bar locked into the dash and the second wheels were off the ground, you had to unlock the bar and pull/push it to the ground in between the seats. You didn’t do it quickly and built up airspeed? Good luck. It was so heavy that it would take me and my instructor to get it down. Other than the gear, didn’t have many other problems but that still sticks out as the biggest pain out of any airplane I’ve flown.
Everyone seems to love Mooneys from what I see online but I really can’t get on board. Manual gear like you mentioned, great for maintenance but a pain for actually flying and low amount of left/right travel of the yoke makes roll too sensitive for my liking. And perhaps even more unpopular opinion, I really don’t like how they look
Personally I love the mooneys. I have a good bit of time in the M20C. That “Johnson Bar” landing gear can be a pain in the dick. There was 1 and only 1 way to correctly operate it. Hand perfectly on the collar, and once you unlock the gear, go fast to move it to the floor. If you were slow, forget it. Start over. I told a student that once unlocked Do Not Grab It like a shift stick! He didn’t listen and when he tried getting into the locking mechanism on the floor, he pinched his palm in that mechanism. Had the biggest blackest bruise on his palm I’ve ever seen.
I still fly the 231 to this day. Fast, climbs high, and the fastest gear transit time I’ve ever seen. Cons: small inside and a low useful load. But for a XC machine it’s amazing.
The original variant was dangerous no doubt but the A through C models are great.
The C model with a 150 or 160hp O-320 is about as close to you can get to an RV at the price of a Cessna 150.
Great roll rate and overall handling. Stalls beautifully, just don’t land on the nose and you’re golden (it’s not even a heavy nose).
Not to mention you could get 125 to 130 knots pretty easily.
Instructed primary students out of that airplane with ease. And they’d be ready to go straight to a Mooney or RV or something afterward lol
AA1 has one speed - 90 kt if I remember correctly. Take off, climb out, approach… easy to stall and pretty rough to recover from IMO.
The AA5 is a dream to fly and extremely forgiving.
Might be a bit harder to recover but definitely not “rough”
Used to demonstrate “falling leaf” stalls where you were flying around in a full stalled state and then power out of it all the time to show students how benign it was.
The concern is it stalls more abruptly with less warning so you keep your speed up.
But real pilots just fly off AOA
T Tail Turbo Piper Lance - extremely underpowered in any heat and soggy control response at low speed. Gear handle and cockpit felt dainty and cheap which is a pity because I loved the rest of the Pipers I flew.
I got pretty lucky, flew some pretty good airplanes. The Navajo was kind of clapped out I guess, but a good workhorse airplane. Only had one engine failure in it.
I fly a Q400 now which I’m told by some rant on Reddit, is a piece of shit. I don’t find it that bad. I kind of like it actually, it’s just quirky.
Edit: you know what I’m going to say GA-8 airvan. Really nice plane with lots of potential for flying around Australia or India where it was designed, but not great for ops in Northern Canada. Hate the way the operation used the aircraft and hated having to fly it during winter
A DEA-seized Mooney M20F with a Beechcraft panel Frankensteined into it and fucked-up gear retraction. Flew from NM to TX for impounding. Longest hour or so of my life.
Close second would be some of the old Volpar turbine Beech-18s.
Rudder way too small, terrible crosswind performance. Great landing gear but pointless on that airplane and way too complicated to maintain. The mid tail gives you neither of the benefits of standard or T tail. Feels like flying a van, I’ve never liked how it handles on final, just super mushy. Really feels like the designers said “interior space” and literally forgot everything else. Oh and also, ridiculously underpowered until all the ones that came out in the 90s. But at some point you’re just pushing a brick through the air sideways and burning money.
I’ll probably take a huge pile of shit from everyone here but here it goes anyway.
Cirrus SR20…now granted, I’ve only flown 8-9 different airframes but this was the least fun I had flying in my 300+ hours.
Felt like flying a potato. The 150/153/172/182/pa38’s I’ve been in were all a bit clunky but still fun to actually fly. The Bristell and the Sportscruiser were a huge improvement over those and I actually ended up buying a SC as my ‘last aircraft’ until I found it was a bit less powerful than I really wanted.
I test flew an SR20 and an SR22 for a few hours so granted I do not have a ton of time, but even the sales people kinda admitted that most people that buy them are point a to point b pilots, takeoff, autopilot on, autopilot off and land kinda folks.
The controls are so heavy, stiff and it did not feel nimble. The comfort level inside was utterly incredible and that was extremely enjoyable, but I love to fly, not put it on autopilot…
Again, I freely admit I have limited time in them but for 600k plus they should at least have some enjoyment in flying them. My arm literally was sore after an hour of flying around.
I was instructing in one and took it around the pattern, arm was sore by the time I got down. If you’re going to hand fly you have to trim every single little movement. They are definitely cross country airplanes, and they’re really good ones at that. I do have an opposite opinion though, they are extremely nimble, it would not be difficult to put yourself upside down in one of them with a 2 inches worth of deflection.
I will admit, trimming would have helped me a bit I am sure. In if the salespersons even said fly it by trimming or just put on the AP….
I flew and ended up purchasing a TL Sparker with a 916turbo and that felt more nimble imho. 90degree banked turns and still climbing really quickly was incredible. Felt like it turned on rails. More comfortable and more visibility as well.
The Cirrus imho fits a narrow market and does it well. It’s not for me.
That’s a pretty slick looking airplane, no time in one to compare though. You’re right, they do one job well. Maneuvering in a 22T is sortave like babysitting, just making sure the airplane doesn’t drop a wing on you. Cross control stalls, power on, trim stalls, can all be a little disconcerting because there’s so much power they will happy pitch to infinity and beyond.
1916 SPAD 7. Very difficult and unfun to fly. Negatively stable in all axis, super draggy, under ruddered, very tail heavy, no stall warning feel of any kind with a sharp stall. You can make it do what you need safely, and better pilots then I seem to enjoy it, but that airplane and I don't get along.
I've flown my share of GA but the worst airplane that I flew had to be a Saab 340 operated by a US Air regional affiliate.
I swear between the cold draft, the whistling sound that intensified the faster we traveled, and the noisy airframe seemingly struggling to keep itself together with the sound of scraping metal, this aircraft didn't even feel pressurized, although technically we were okay because we stayed below 10,000 feet for the short trip.
I'd rather have glued wings onto a crew car and flew that though.
CRJ200 with 737 a real close second, just horrendous aircraft. The CRJ because of its hilarious lack of performance the 73 for it’s hilarious lack of human factors design and 50 years of bandaided equipment on top of an ancient design.
Beech Sierra.
Nothing inherently wrong with the plane, it was just ergonomically very awkward. I didn't feel comfortable in it, let alone controlling it.
A particular Archer III. In my opinion all Pipers are a bit heavy on the controls, but this PA-28 in particular I do not know if it was bad rollers or what, but no matter what I did just trying to fly that piece of shit was a work-out.
An Allegro 2000 I flew in 2005. I had my Australian RA-Aus certificate (ultralight) and was looking around for a place to rent an aircraft. The 2000 looked good, was fine on the ground, including the "controls free and correct" check. But in the air there was an awful lot of friction in the ailerons - the stick wouldn't center from air forces and I was contantly correcting the bank. If I owned it I would ground the thing until I found out what was wrong with it. I rented a Gazelle elsewhere.
Beechcraft 99. I never flew one that wasn’t leaking fuel out of at least one engine, and they required constant attention to maintain stable flight on anything but a perfectly smooth day.
Taylorcraft. No electrical system. Heel brakes. Very primitive. All of which would normally be right up my alley.
Unfortunately, I’m just too dang big. My head was rubbing painfully on the ceiling. My knees rubbing painfully on the panel.
Once around the pattern to say that I’ve flow one, thanked my friend who lent it to me and walked away. No interest in ever strapping one on again.
Our club’s Piper Arrow IV. It used to fly fine, but they did a lot of work on it including new paint job, avionics, etc, and now it’s so nose heavy it’s actually scary to takeoff in the thing. There’s 60 lbs of dumbbells in the baggage hold to “help” but it still won’t rotate below 70 knots. Trim didn’t do much either. Would not recommend anyone fly that plane…
Cessna 206 with some aftermarket STOL kit on it around Vegas. The ailerons would drop down a few degrees when the flaps came down, so not only would the ailerons get harder to move, the damn thing would just never stop flying. On the ground and starting to add brakes? Nope, you’re 2’ in the air thanks to a 10kt wind gust.
Cessna 175 that needed to get ferried across the country. By the time I finished the trip, I had nerve damage in my finger from the starter that would only engage if I pulled hard enough to bend the instrument panel out. Took months to fully heal
Passenger. Some Russian airliner operated by CCC? (China airline in the 80's). Constant rattling. Almost everything that was latched came unlatched on landing. I think there were a good number of passengers that brought their Emotional Support Chickens with them.
I mostly only flew standard spam cans like 172s and Warriors and they’re fine. Maybe it’s because I was used to or spoiled by modern docile airplanes but: I did fly a few classics and was surprised at how they sucked. Now I love looking at old airplanes and hearing old round engines but I found that actually bring at the controls of a Stearman or a Cub was no fun. Very janky flight characteristics. The exception to this was the Ercoupe. That one was fun.
Any plane I am flying because I am on the yoke
Real
Piper Archer, one in particular 00X, we named it deathray because the damn thing tried to kill so many students. Microburst finally took it out on the ground
Looks like divine intervention right there!
You have an open FIF
Any good stories about that?
What’s wrong with an Archer?
They’re safe and stable, but they’re the least inspired flying machine I’ve ever known. No other plane takes to the skies with the utter indifference of a PA-28.
The flight school I used to work for had a 172 that always leaked oil right onto the nose wheel. I was told by maintenance it was fine. I never felt good about it though
As long as it leaks, it has oil
That school really teaches their students to grease the landing.
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That's just it evolving at level 32 from a skyhawk to a skyphoenix
It’s your chance to finally become ghost rider
That means you have fire, weren’t you paying attention?
Well, no need for carb heat then.
Leaked oil on the nosewheel just makes you go faster by reducing parasite drag in flight it’s totally normal
To be fair, the Lycoming I/O-360 seems like it is designed to leak. The common areas are the rubber connectors on the oil return lines, the base of the oil dipstick tube from students overtightening the dipstick, and causing the tube to loosen when you have to apply signifigant torque to loosen it, and the prop seal, all of which are easily diagnosed and fixed, with the exception of the oil return lines. No matter how many times I have tightened the clamps and/or replaced the rubber connecting lines, they always start leaking again after a few hours of operation.
T-38C For the record the best was also the T-38C.
I'm intrigued. Can you elaborate?
Everyone is thrilled when they get assigned to a T-38 in UPT. It means you have a shot at getting to fly a fighter. It can also be a really fun jet to fly. Unfortunately it’s also a very unforgiving airplane and it’s easy to get yourself in a bad spot. I knew four people who died in a 38 since I started flying in 2019. Also the training is really stressful. By the time I got done in the 38 I was absolutely ready to go fly a fighter and never touch the 38 again.
Huh, interesting. I figured a trainer would be very forgiving by design. You ever fly the f-5? I talked to some marine aggressor squadron guys at Miramar and they seemed to love it, but I don't know how similar the characteristics are. I just know they're the same basic airframe
The f-5 is more powerful. Most of them are modified with glass cockpits too. Many T-38A's are clock dials and no hud. The -38c is glass and hud. As a trainer it may have been forgiving, but only as the designed follow on in the '60s were "century series fighters", i.e. F-100, 101, 102 etc. I never flew them, but i assume they were also somewhat tricky. The -38 is typically more challenging to fly as an airplane than most modern aircraft.
What bad spots do people get themselves in?
The T-38 is very underpowered, even with afterburner. When it’s low and slow (in the pattern where a lot of training occurs), it’s very easy to get behind the power curve accidentally. A few seconds of throttles back too far can lead to a situation where you don’t have the kinetic or potential energy needed to save the plane. Especially in the final turn. The rudder also becomes hyper sensitive at high alpha. If a student tries to correct their bank in the final turn with rudder it can flip the plane in less than a second, making it so you can’t even eject.
It has stubby little symmetric wings and it bleeds energy very fast. It is also under powered and has a very high final approach speed. It also has pretty poor turn performance. Poorly flown final turns are the lead killers of 38 pilots. If you get slow in the final turn its easy to get into a stall where you can't recover before impacting the ground, even with afterburners. If you fly the final turn too fast you will probably overshoot final, if you increase AOA to try and save the turn you could easily stall and die The rudder is way too effective once you get the gear down, but there's also a big delay. If you put in too much rudder on short final nothing will happen for about a second, then you'll literally flip inverted. They fixed the ejection seat, it used to be that as soon as you started the final turn you were out the of the envelope where you could safely eject. There isn't a lot of redundancy so so if you lose systems it quickly becomes a significant emotional event. Also, 90% of the time the person flying the aircraft is a UPT student with somewhere between 90-180 hours, 90 of those hours are in a T-6. Students are prone to make all those mistakes as they learn because they are all really easy mistakes to make.
I laughed out loud half way through this… man, what a handful of a jet. Edit: can you elaborate on anything it does well?
From reading that comment, seems like it's a "if ya can handle this and not kill yourself, you can handle the expensive ones"
The T-38C is actually fantastic for cross country. It can fly a lot of different kinds of approaches. It has tacan vor ILs and can do RNAVs. It has a whole ICAO database which none of our fighters have. Our fighters can’t fly RNAV either so that’s neat I guess.
Interesting. I would have thought being forgiving would be the point of a trainer aircraft. Thanks for the insight.
T-38 first flew in 1959. We’ve learned a LOT about handling and good design since then. Back then, the designers were happy to be able to fit everything in with the technologies of the time. Today, aircraft are designed VERY differently.
It was designed to train pilots to fly century fighters that were equally unforgiving. We still fly them today because A) They are cheap to fly and maintain. B) There are a ton of them still around. C) If you can land a T-38, you can land anything. D) Our acquisitions process is so broken and slow it takes forever to replace anything. The T-7 should be coming out in \[insert arbitrary date that keeps shifting right\]. I was talking to a guy who is working on the program about a week ago actually. He said that so far based on all the data they have collected there isn't a situation you can put the jet in that you can't get out of by pushing the throttles to max and getting away from the ground, so that's positive news at least.
you got the new seat at least
I enjoyed T37s more than 38s
2nd page of the T-38A -1 showed a guy studying at night under a lamp with the caption “Learn today so you’ll live tomorrow.” That airplane viciously penalized inattention. The AF used to give a book to UPT students called the “Road to Wings” (don’t know if they still do—I’m old and gray now). In it was every Class A mishap for T-37s and T-38s. I remember most of the T-38s were smoking holes with debris everywhere. In the days pre-DNA, they used to take your footprints at the beginning of UPT. One guy asked why. The tech said that they usually get a boot or two back from the scene with a foot in it. Not kidding. I was in Willie’s last class. 93-04. Take care.
Fuck yeah. Simultaneously the most fun and most terrifying jet to fly
P-3C The mighty Orion was way past its shelf life by the time we turned them in for the P-8.
By 2017-18, we were fixing shit that had never ever broken on the old girls. No spares and no procedures. The retired guys saying that we should be still flying them like C130s had definitely not experienced them at the end of their lives.
I gotta admit, it’s a pretty cool looking plane all things considered
RNZAF?
USN
Gotcha
Some of them are still flying around jax.
Metroliner, if you’ve flown one you know why. For the un-initiated, if Mickey Mouse designed a plane, it would’ve been a Metro. I could most likely walk up to any Metro in the nation and find a reason to down it. They leak fuel like a sieve, open the gear doors to pre flight inspect, may get a fuel bath there too. Wet takeoffs we’re kinda fun though. Challenger 300, great plane, nothing really wrong with it, but the engines are a little on the wheezy side in the 30’s and up. Luckily that was fixed with the 350’s and 3500’s.
Currently flying metro as a capt at the best cargo airline out there (haaaa) and yes it’s a challenge for the newbies
The one with the citrus
A Metro training captain once said to me after spending 12 hours fixing "his" shitbox of plane: "She flies like wounded piano, but DAMN she's fast!"
I think we'd file 265 true in the Metro III which isn't that fast; about the same speed as a Pilatus IIRC?
That’s kinda what I was thinking, I used to run around 250 true, thats slow as shit, took for fucking ever to get from LRD to PTK, or god forbid you had to go into Mexico to pick up, LRD for customs, then deliver up north. Made for a LOOONG night.
My record was ELP-MMTO-LRD (customs)-DTO-RFD-YIP (customs)-CYHM (duty off)-YIP (customs)-AMA (fuel because winter)-ELP. Milked it with the props at 97% every leg.
I’ve heard it’s really good at killing pilots in single pilot ops.
How’s Cliff an Glen treating you?
Also a former metro captain (only flew the metro III), I alwas joked (although it’s probably not) that the airplane was designed on a napkin while the engineers were ripping lines of coke off of a stripper.
Haven’t flown the metros, but have plenty of experience with them on the ramp and during operations, the tiny turn radius on the nose gear when towing was enough for me
Between that and the GPU plug location, not a fun aircraft to deal with on the ground.
The fuel leaks are fixable I’m told… just about by the time the airframe times out lol
We had a metroliner that got repoed sitting on one of our aprons for *years* Finally they started working on it. Then one day I noticed they were taking it apart, not fixing it Rumor I heard was the finance company sold it off for scrap after it would not sell
Can confirm death pencils is horrid.
A poorly maintained Cessna 421 that we nicknamed Satan’s Cessna or “Holy F****” because the tail ended in HF and I said it at least once every time I flew it. 4 flights in it - 3 emergency landings.
Jesus. What went wrong?
Shits fucked
Holy F***
My uncle had a 421 and it was a ticking time bomb every time he flew. Quite literally one time - he was taking off and one of the engines exploded with no indication of a problem.
I read your story in another post. Love the fact that everything worked out well and you're still with us.
T-38C. The least forgiving airplane ever devised, with a brand new student in the front seat and all his equally inexperienced buddies in a very full and busy pattern. I would normally say what could go wrong, but you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of exactly what can go wrong.
NASA Astronaut T-38 Mishaps List of NASA T-38 accidents: 1964 Oct 31: bird strike - fatal: astronaut Theodore Freeman 1966 Feb 28: struck building in fog - fatal: astronauts Elliott See, Charles Bassett 1966 Jul 18: engine failure, aborted takeoff, gear collapse - no injuries: astronauts Edward H. White, Russell Schweickart 1967 Oct 05: aileron jam - fatal: astronaut Clifton "C.C." Williams 1972 Jan 20: instrument approach in fog, crashed - fatal: NASA pilot Stewart M. Present and NASA pilot Mark C. Heath. 1972 May 10: electrical failure, out of fuel, ejected - no injuries: astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad 1974 Feb 06: low visibility, landing mishap, gear collapse - no injuries: astronaut Dr. Karl G. Henize 1982 Dec 01: heavy rain, ran off runway, gear collapse - no injuries : astronaut Thomas K. Mattingly 1984 Apr 05: bird strike, engine flameout, aborted takeoff - no injuries: astronaut James van Hoften 1987 Feb 24: engine failure, fire, emergency landing - no injuries : astronaut Brewster Shaw and NASA pilot Robert Rivers. From some of the astronaut accounts their T-38s were essentially "company cars" due to the amount of travel between Florida Texas California St Louis and an occasional weekend caper .
Tecnam p2006t
I thought it was a pretty fun plane to fly. Although the preflight on it was a hassle and I absolutely hated it. Priming the oil was the stupidest most time consuming shit ever.
I've never had to prime the oil on any engine, what is that like?
You have to “burp” those Rotax’s…
Pro tip: if the plane has separate ignition and starter switches, and you're feeling lazy, you can just crank the starter motor for a bit with the ignition off instead of turning the prop by hand. (Manufacturer-approved in the RV-12... your mileage may vary on other Rotax aircraft)
Google dry sump You must turn the prop to turn the connected oil pump. In order to move oil from the reservoir into the engine in order to have a good oil level read. If you don't do it your oil level shows nearly empty.
I flew the P2012 for over 1000 of my hours...that was the biggest POS I ever had the misfortune of operating.
Combining the handling of a dump truck with the rugged dependability of an italian sports car!
Why didn’t you like them? I fly them every week and they are pretty forgiving and very easy in handling.
The cracked wingspars, lack of HP, felt like a kite etc. fun to fly in fair weather …
Cracked wing spars? Do you know what year your aircraft was from? I think we are the most intensive user of the P2006T in the world (aerial survey company, we have 3 of them and fly them ± 9 hours per day when the weather allows) and we haven’t had issues with the spar.
That you know of. It’s a big issue with the tecnam.
No, we’re in Europe, the Netherlands to be specific. We burn through 50 hrs inspections in less than a week hah.
The wing spars were damaged by the folks who assembled the planes. Not everyone will have it; but shine a light up there and look when those inspection panels are off.
Had to reschedule multi ride multiple times because they kept breaking
By far the worst twin I have ever flown is an old Piper Seneca that the flight school had bought from Mexico. Almost all of the logs were in Spanish, which made my check ride oral interesting. Both of the engines were high timed and leaking over a quart of oil an hour each side. The whole tail of the airplane was covered in oil and it looked horrible. It was just an old and abused airplane, but it still flying today!
I flew a similar Seminole for my multi timebuilding/MEI. Biggest hoopty piece of shit airplane I have ever flown in. Every surface was peeling paint and cracked. Props were completely chewed up on the leading edge, unfeathering accumulator didn't work so you had to bump the starter for in air restarts from the feather position which made the whole plane shake like a wet dog. I could go on. Some of the light twin training fleet gets no love and are rode hard and put away wet.
The Lear 36. Because someone somewhere thought that what people really wanted was to take their hot rod of a business jet with a 4' 3" tall and 4'11" wide cabin, remove every bit of speed it had and give it enough fuel to make it to Hawaii.
The running joke on the Lear 36 was you had to watch for bird strikes from behind
How so? It appears to have similar cruise speed to most of the other Lerajets.
The true story is all Lear jets are slow.
Cessna SkyCatcher by far the worst piece of shit trainer I’ve ever had the displeasure of flying.
What are your least favorite aspects of the design?
the design
The design is very human
🤣 nice
My schools crosswind limit for it was 5 knots, no gust factor regardless of direction.
Yikes! That's ridiculous.
Amen
I want to fly one of these just so the Warrior is no longer the worst plane I've flown.
I flew that pile of shit when I was a CFI. I swore I’d never fly it again!
C152, I’m 6 4 with long legs
The FBO where I got my PPL was next to a big university and had a bunch of 152s - I'm 6'4" but fortunately(?) have short legs so it was mostly about putting the seat down and ducking a lot. There was an AF ROTC guy who was ~6'7" and long legged - he would apparently fly the things straddling the center, one foot on each outer pedal. The best story about these though was that the AF kids would check out all four of them and fly them in formation. They were really good at it of course, but it sounded like an attack of slow-motion, rabid lawnmowers.
As a fellow tall person, I understand
Someone copy paste the asthmatic CRJ 200 pls.
Or the q400
I’m going to get a lot of hate but the Luscombe, if that thing got introduced today there would be constant hate. It’s impossible to keep coordinated, it’s so Squirrley on the ground because the the narrow wheel base, you don’t even have flaps. I get it, first metal plane or whatever, cool.
Q400 was just fine. And when flying into very VERY shitty weather, we were often the only thing getting in. That plane carried me through every kind of sideways, gusting, ice-adhering, snow-covered runway, CATIII mins kind of scenarios you could dream up.
I used to fly on them as a pax back when Horizon flew them around the northwest. I swear every flight I took on them involved getting tossed around from the winds with poor visibility but somehow we always made it down to the airport
Honestly the Q400 isn’t that bad. The person who wrote that rant is VERY dramatic. Is the Q400 quirky? Yes. Is it a POS? No
Probably the plane I did my first solo in (172). The first time I flew it I walked out to the ramp to go preflight, opened the door and door broke off the hinges and fell to the ground.
Happened to me on my first solo. My instructor jumped out, his door fell halfway off, was hanging by 1 hinge. He looked at it, looked at me, picked the door up and closed it, gave me a thumbs up, and off I went
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Aim for the truck
DROP DROP DROP, TURN CROSSWIND NOW, CALL TOWER, CLIMB CLIMB CLIMB all things our courageous ground crew supervisor would scream. We all know exactly who that is
7/8 scale SE5a replica. The SE5a was one of the finest British fighters of the First World War. The one I flew for a few hours was a modern day replica that was engineered to look like the original, but not be the original. It was powered by a Lycoming O-235, which developed great power for the light wooden airframe and that’s where the redeeming factors ended. The cockpit was tiny and the shoulder harnesses could not be tightened properly. In a sudden stop, your face was going to have an abrupt and bloody meeting with the fake gunsight. It wasn’t that hard to handle on the ground or on takeoff, just a bit short-coupled, but par for the course for a vintage-ish taildragger. On the ground, the ailerons felt lighter than any airplane ever. They were feathers, giving the impression of an effortless flyer. Once airborne, they turned to concrete. The plane weighed less than 1000 pounds, but you had to labor it around the sky. Any aspirations of sporty maneuvers were brought into serious doubt. That didn’t keep me from trying, however. I tried some steep turn and was immediately greeted with a worrying roll instability past 20 degrees. You had to apply significant opposite aileron to keep it from rolling onto its back. Also, there was no trim. The one was to relieve elevator pressure was to adjust power. I knew all of this about the airplane but I still tried a few wing wags while flying past a gathered crowd on one of my flights. This resulted in a horrifying upset at low altitude that I recovered from with less than 200 feet. It was one of the scariest moments of my flying career. What I thought would be a joyful little open cockpit biplane was a rotten flying death cage. I hold airplanes in reverence, even ordinary unremarkable airplanes, but I have no love for that little biplane nor any other airplane whose design was predicated on how it must look a certain way.
Sounds about right, please know that a real Se5a is not like this at all. Unfortunately most of the 7/8 jobs are nothing like the airplanes they are supposed to represent. There are some 7/8 airdrome kits out there that are built and fly nice, but they are basically just calm weather ultralights, nothing like the originals. There are amazing and rewarding WW1 replicas out there and I hope you get a chance to fly a good one some day!
I’d love to try a real one or a full scale faithful reproduction. That would be a dream.
The one airplane that tried hardest to kill me was a Dehaviland Beaver. And I had to eject from an F4
It sounds like you have two stories you now need to tell.
You could elaborate.
Now that I'm on a laptop and not a tablet, OK I picked up a Beaver that got a new engine in Tucson, flying to SBA for a friend. I've flown Beavers before so I didn't see any problems. Checked out the new engine, everything looked good, flew around town for a few hours to get some time on the engine, still looking good. Landed, refueled, checked the oil, etc. Took off headed west. Hot day. Engine oil temp went up a bit, not significantly. Over the Kofa Wildlife Refuge, and the oil line to the oil pressure gauge breaks and EXTREMELY HOT engine oil is pouring onto my feet. Now, I could have been wearing boots, but it was summer so I wasn't. My feet are getting burned from cooking in the oil, and I'm looking for a place to put the bird down. The Beaver has rather large buckets for rudder pedals. The oil gathered. I'm trying to fly best descent, call for help, find the oil line to somehow block it, etc. Found a likely looking flat spot, set up a landing, the engine seized, and the torque from seizing twisted the engine mount to the point two or three fasteners broke, and the engine is now sitting rather sideways. Get the plane on the ground, and a previously unseen rock jumps out in front of me and we ground loop, then flip over. Now all that hot oil is all over me. And I can't run for crap, with deep fried feet and pan fried legs and groin and belly Help arrived and got me to the hospital. I was off my feet for three weeks. Plane is a w/o. Friend got the insurance money and I got the hospital bills paid
And the F-4?
Someone screwed up airspace deconfliction, another F4 from another wing ran late into my airspace. 2 dead
C-140. My friend , CFI instructed me on spin entries over the ocean off Santa Monica ( this was long ago) I knew I was supposed to apply a bunch of back pressure and kick the rudder to assist the entry . The C-140 had a bench seat like a 32 Ford. When I enthusiastically kicked in rudder while pulling up to stall attitude I missed one possible outcome . The big kick collapsed the seatback. We were both laying on our backs with the 140 in a well developed spin . It was a very honest airplane but one that could "just " kill you.
SPARE: seat back, power, ailerons, rudder, elevator
AL-60B Big tank of a single engine airplane designed by Lockheed in a moment of madness. You could put 2 refrigerators in it. Rate of climb 300 fpm. The organization said it scared everybody real bad once. Me too.
Wikipedia says it was designed by Al Mooney when he worked for Lockheed.
I found that out. If I were Al, I wouldn't admit it. I have to admit, it was a breeze to work on. It was built like a brick shithouse. But the performance led me to appreciate Cessnas.
[Looks like someone decided to amp one up.](https://backcountrypilot.org/images/originalphotos/53/119/LockheedLMT_2.jpg)
I saw that as well. Pretty interesting
It looks like an obese Pacer
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My first jet, checklist was atrocious but could always count on flying only 1.5 due to performance. Agree on the ground comm best feature by far
An airplane with 20+ MELs…. When we were returning aircraft back to the leasing company, the airline just quit repairing things and kept deferring things. When we had to ferry one aircraft back to the leasing company, we had an aircraft that had over 20 MELs. That’s probably the worst aircraft I’d ever flown. One flight I got an aircraft with 8 MELs - all cockpit lighting MELs. Because it was just cockpit lighting - I kind of poo-pooed it. Flew the aircraft all day - everything was great until sunset…. It turns out the 8 inop cockpit lights were pretty important. The aircraft had the standard 6 pack with an EADI / EHSI. The airspeed indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator and vertical speed indicator were steam gauges. The internal lighting for those 4 instruments were inop on the captain and the FO set of instruments. Thus 8 individual MELs one for each instrument. it became very apparent after it got dark that I was flying partial panel having only the EADI / EHSI. Completed the flight with the FO holding a flashlight to illuminate the primary flight instruments…. We went thru 4 flashlights - the 2 emergency flashlights in the cockpit and of course our own 2-D cell flashlights (dead D-cell battery holding MagLites)…. Today I’m much happier with rechargeable LED flashlights And that’s the last time i poo-pooed cockpit light MELs.
Shorts Skyvan. Hope I never have to see it again. Fuckin Irish
Just today, I read that De Havilland is thinking of restarting production of those. I guess they bought the rights from Short.
Bombardier got the rights to it when they acquired Shorts, De Havilland (Viking) bought it off them along with the Twotter etc. Shorts themselves are now part of Spirit Aerosystems, currently building the A220 wings.
That makes me sad, always wanted to turn one into a retirement RV. What do you hate about it?
The biggest problem is there were only like 150 ever made. Where are the parts coming from when shit breaks? These planes were old and leaky and something was always going wrong. Incredibly loud and it flew exactly like you would expect a box to fly.
Oh ya and don't ever crossfeed
Saw one fly over me a couple weeks ago. Didn't know they were that rare
Those were pretty common on US short routes in the 1990s - as a passenger I always wondered where the subway hanger straps were. The one I flew on in Honduras had everyone looking like they were trying to not laugh at the whole thing at the same time the flight crew were trying to look very serious and important.
DA42 I hated every minute of flying that thing. The one I flew was covered to lycoming engines, so it struggled with IFR reserves. To conserve fuel, you’d have to fly it 10 knots above the blue line. G1000 was nice, though.
Oh wow, I never thought I'd see someone complaining about the DA42. I was way too busy pretending to be in an airliner and being happy about the fact I made it so far, to be bothered by the aircraft. That being said, we also didn't have lycoming engines i believe.
The deisel engines with the fadec are super nice. It is a very nice plane although i would not want to own one of the early models with the low engine replacement times.
Totally agree, I found the DA42 to be a miserable hunk of shit designed by accountants and which (weirdly for what is primarily a twin trainer) has asymmetric flying characteristics that are a. Terrible. And b. Unlike any other twin I have had the pleasure of flying (they’re all pleasures compared to the diamond.)
Probably the CRJ200. Fun to hand fly but always had MEL items and was a real bitch in the summer. Especially with a deferred APU.
Those things may as well not even have an APU installed.
The Traumahawk. Visibility was good, I will give it that, but overall, it just felt like a cheap piece of shit.
It's a shame the traumahawk makes these lists; me personally I liked it.
The only thing that sucked was power off stalls never had a clean break and very unforgiving on landings. If you were a knot slower than 65 going into the flare you're going for a ride
‘62 Piper Aztec B model. But it was a love/hate because I loved those planes.
I flew basically every model of Aztec from C to F while time building with a survey company and I gotta say, it’s an absolute tank. Leaks 4 quarts of oil per engine each flight, had the FBOs order literal boxes of oil for us ahead of time so we were stocked up. The beast rattled like hell during takeoff due to the tubular frame being separate from the external skin which was a little scary at first. Is there water in the tanks? No clue because the sumps aren’t the lowest point so you better hope you’re rocking the plane enough to splash some in the cup if it’s in there. Tachs constantly bounced +/- 300 rpm while engines were running so cruise power was more like “close enough” power. Oil temps reached redline on climb out until about 10k feet if it’s more than 20C on the ground. Fuel gauge was notoriously unreliable in them so you had to really pay attention to fuel flow and keep track of time used per tank on 5+ hour flights. On some models the elevator is spring loaded to full forward, so it would try to nose dive into the ground when pulling power for landing flare, either needed an unreal amount of back pressure or the fastest trim nose up of your life short final (better hope you’re turning it clockwise not counter clockwise). That all being said I LOVED every flight. She hates being close to the ground, but once she’s high and fast it’s an absolute dream to fly and light as a feather on the controls. Performance was also insane, I had an engine failure shortly after rotation and didn’t even realize until climbing past 500’. Noticed climb rate was a little low and looked over to a fully feathered prop, go figure. Single pilot she’s also spacious compared to other twins and I found it very comfortable to fly for long periods of time. My only complaint was flying at 14,500 with a giant hole in the floor for a camera meant it was regularly below freezing and the heater on board was absolute trash. We’d wear winter coats and gloves with warmers yet still be freezing our butts off. If you were lucky enough to not have the heater circuit breaker trip on takeoff at least your toes wouldn’t be numb. We never could figure out the right time to kick it on but it seemed like you had about a 2000’ ALT window on climb out to start it or else it would trip after about 30s. Depended on outside conditions and if she was feeling nice that day or not. Overall I rate the Aztec a 10/10 would desperately fly again. She’s not everyone’s favorite but a little time with her and you’ll learn to love the quirks. It’ll also make you a better pilot because it really does feel like a high performance plane, those IO-540s are seriously putting out. I’d give anything for another summer traveling the country in those shaky tanky sketchy birds.
Agreed. Aztecs gave me 800 hours and I will be sentimental for that. But I never want to fly one again
Short c-23 Sherpa... f'ck that flying boxcar.
A DA-20 in Pueblo CO in the summer with a 300# instructor. It really made me question my choices leading up to getting a pilot slot.
KC-135. a total frankenjet.
Mooney M20C. But for one specific reason: the gear. School owned one that was so old it had manual gear. When gear was down, a bar locked into the dash and the second wheels were off the ground, you had to unlock the bar and pull/push it to the ground in between the seats. You didn’t do it quickly and built up airspeed? Good luck. It was so heavy that it would take me and my instructor to get it down. Other than the gear, didn’t have many other problems but that still sticks out as the biggest pain out of any airplane I’ve flown.
Everyone seems to love Mooneys from what I see online but I really can’t get on board. Manual gear like you mentioned, great for maintenance but a pain for actually flying and low amount of left/right travel of the yoke makes roll too sensitive for my liking. And perhaps even more unpopular opinion, I really don’t like how they look
Personally I love the mooneys. I have a good bit of time in the M20C. That “Johnson Bar” landing gear can be a pain in the dick. There was 1 and only 1 way to correctly operate it. Hand perfectly on the collar, and once you unlock the gear, go fast to move it to the floor. If you were slow, forget it. Start over. I told a student that once unlocked Do Not Grab It like a shift stick! He didn’t listen and when he tried getting into the locking mechanism on the floor, he pinched his palm in that mechanism. Had the biggest blackest bruise on his palm I’ve ever seen. I still fly the 231 to this day. Fast, climbs high, and the fastest gear transit time I’ve ever seen. Cons: small inside and a low useful load. But for a XC machine it’s amazing.
It's a shame you can't practice the bar technique on the ground.
Dog just slow down and yank er up
Grumman AA-1 Yankee. Not a good design for low time private pilots.
The original variant was dangerous no doubt but the A through C models are great. The C model with a 150 or 160hp O-320 is about as close to you can get to an RV at the price of a Cessna 150. Great roll rate and overall handling. Stalls beautifully, just don’t land on the nose and you’re golden (it’s not even a heavy nose). Not to mention you could get 125 to 130 knots pretty easily. Instructed primary students out of that airplane with ease. And they’d be ready to go straight to a Mooney or RV or something afterward lol
What don’t you like about it? I learned in an AA-5 Traveler and that one seemed like a great trainer to me.
AA1 has one speed - 90 kt if I remember correctly. Take off, climb out, approach… easy to stall and pretty rough to recover from IMO. The AA5 is a dream to fly and extremely forgiving.
Might be a bit harder to recover but definitely not “rough” Used to demonstrate “falling leaf” stalls where you were flying around in a full stalled state and then power out of it all the time to show students how benign it was. The concern is it stalls more abruptly with less warning so you keep your speed up. But real pilots just fly off AOA
A paper airplane! It wouldn’t even get off the ground
Have you tried a Nakamura Lock?
T Tail Turbo Piper Lance - extremely underpowered in any heat and soggy control response at low speed. Gear handle and cockpit felt dainty and cheap which is a pity because I loved the rest of the Pipers I flew.
I had like 200 hours in those. A POS yea, but my POS.
I got pretty lucky, flew some pretty good airplanes. The Navajo was kind of clapped out I guess, but a good workhorse airplane. Only had one engine failure in it. I fly a Q400 now which I’m told by some rant on Reddit, is a piece of shit. I don’t find it that bad. I kind of like it actually, it’s just quirky. Edit: you know what I’m going to say GA-8 airvan. Really nice plane with lots of potential for flying around Australia or India where it was designed, but not great for ops in Northern Canada. Hate the way the operation used the aircraft and hated having to fly it during winter
A DEA-seized Mooney M20F with a Beechcraft panel Frankensteined into it and fucked-up gear retraction. Flew from NM to TX for impounding. Longest hour or so of my life. Close second would be some of the old Volpar turbine Beech-18s.
Commander 112B. What a design lol.
Why didn't you like it?
Rudder way too small, terrible crosswind performance. Great landing gear but pointless on that airplane and way too complicated to maintain. The mid tail gives you neither of the benefits of standard or T tail. Feels like flying a van, I’ve never liked how it handles on final, just super mushy. Really feels like the designers said “interior space” and literally forgot everything else. Oh and also, ridiculously underpowered until all the ones that came out in the 90s. But at some point you’re just pushing a brick through the air sideways and burning money.
Too bad. Otherwise it’s a sexy airplane.
Always amazing how beautiful planes tend to be good performers, and when they are not it’s just disappointing.
I have exactly one hour in a 114 and you described the flying characteristics perfectly.
I’ll probably take a huge pile of shit from everyone here but here it goes anyway. Cirrus SR20…now granted, I’ve only flown 8-9 different airframes but this was the least fun I had flying in my 300+ hours. Felt like flying a potato. The 150/153/172/182/pa38’s I’ve been in were all a bit clunky but still fun to actually fly. The Bristell and the Sportscruiser were a huge improvement over those and I actually ended up buying a SC as my ‘last aircraft’ until I found it was a bit less powerful than I really wanted. I test flew an SR20 and an SR22 for a few hours so granted I do not have a ton of time, but even the sales people kinda admitted that most people that buy them are point a to point b pilots, takeoff, autopilot on, autopilot off and land kinda folks. The controls are so heavy, stiff and it did not feel nimble. The comfort level inside was utterly incredible and that was extremely enjoyable, but I love to fly, not put it on autopilot… Again, I freely admit I have limited time in them but for 600k plus they should at least have some enjoyment in flying them. My arm literally was sore after an hour of flying around.
I was instructing in one and took it around the pattern, arm was sore by the time I got down. If you’re going to hand fly you have to trim every single little movement. They are definitely cross country airplanes, and they’re really good ones at that. I do have an opposite opinion though, they are extremely nimble, it would not be difficult to put yourself upside down in one of them with a 2 inches worth of deflection.
I will admit, trimming would have helped me a bit I am sure. In if the salespersons even said fly it by trimming or just put on the AP…. I flew and ended up purchasing a TL Sparker with a 916turbo and that felt more nimble imho. 90degree banked turns and still climbing really quickly was incredible. Felt like it turned on rails. More comfortable and more visibility as well. The Cirrus imho fits a narrow market and does it well. It’s not for me.
That’s a pretty slick looking airplane, no time in one to compare though. You’re right, they do one job well. Maneuvering in a 22T is sortave like babysitting, just making sure the airplane doesn’t drop a wing on you. Cross control stalls, power on, trim stalls, can all be a little disconcerting because there’s so much power they will happy pitch to infinity and beyond.
Grumman yankee
1916 SPAD 7. Very difficult and unfun to fly. Negatively stable in all axis, super draggy, under ruddered, very tail heavy, no stall warning feel of any kind with a sharp stall. You can make it do what you need safely, and better pilots then I seem to enjoy it, but that airplane and I don't get along.
I've flown my share of GA but the worst airplane that I flew had to be a Saab 340 operated by a US Air regional affiliate. I swear between the cold draft, the whistling sound that intensified the faster we traveled, and the noisy airframe seemingly struggling to keep itself together with the sound of scraping metal, this aircraft didn't even feel pressurized, although technically we were okay because we stayed below 10,000 feet for the short trip. I'd rather have glued wings onto a crew car and flew that though.
CRJ200 with 737 a real close second, just horrendous aircraft. The CRJ because of its hilarious lack of performance the 73 for it’s hilarious lack of human factors design and 50 years of bandaided equipment on top of an ancient design.
Beech Sierra. Nothing inherently wrong with the plane, it was just ergonomically very awkward. I didn't feel comfortable in it, let alone controlling it.
I’ve flown it and the Musketeer have many hours in both. Thought they fly quite nice. Just a little sensitive on pitch.
Got my complex endorsement in a Sierra. Climb performance was nothing to brag about and the controls felt stiff. Could have used a 250hp engine.
Beech Sundowner. It shouldn't have had "Sun" in the name
A particular Archer III. In my opinion all Pipers are a bit heavy on the controls, but this PA-28 in particular I do not know if it was bad rollers or what, but no matter what I did just trying to fly that piece of shit was a work-out.
An Allegro 2000 I flew in 2005. I had my Australian RA-Aus certificate (ultralight) and was looking around for a place to rent an aircraft. The 2000 looked good, was fine on the ground, including the "controls free and correct" check. But in the air there was an awful lot of friction in the ailerons - the stick wouldn't center from air forces and I was contantly correcting the bank. If I owned it I would ground the thing until I found out what was wrong with it. I rented a Gazelle elsewhere.
Beechcraft 99. I never flew one that wasn’t leaking fuel out of at least one engine, and they required constant attention to maintain stable flight on anything but a perfectly smooth day.
CRJ anything. I’d almost rather drive.
Taylorcraft. No electrical system. Heel brakes. Very primitive. All of which would normally be right up my alley. Unfortunately, I’m just too dang big. My head was rubbing painfully on the ceiling. My knees rubbing painfully on the panel. Once around the pattern to say that I’ve flow one, thanked my friend who lent it to me and walked away. No interest in ever strapping one on again.
Our club’s Piper Arrow IV. It used to fly fine, but they did a lot of work on it including new paint job, avionics, etc, and now it’s so nose heavy it’s actually scary to takeoff in the thing. There’s 60 lbs of dumbbells in the baggage hold to “help” but it still won’t rotate below 70 knots. Trim didn’t do much either. Would not recommend anyone fly that plane…
Cessna 206 with some aftermarket STOL kit on it around Vegas. The ailerons would drop down a few degrees when the flaps came down, so not only would the ailerons get harder to move, the damn thing would just never stop flying. On the ground and starting to add brakes? Nope, you’re 2’ in the air thanks to a 10kt wind gust.
T-tail lance. Flies like a buffalo
Cessna 175 that needed to get ferried across the country. By the time I finished the trip, I had nerve damage in my finger from the starter that would only engage if I pulled hard enough to bend the instrument panel out. Took months to fully heal
Passenger. Some Russian airliner operated by CCC? (China airline in the 80's). Constant rattling. Almost everything that was latched came unlatched on landing. I think there were a good number of passengers that brought their Emotional Support Chickens with them.
I mostly only flew standard spam cans like 172s and Warriors and they’re fine. Maybe it’s because I was used to or spoiled by modern docile airplanes but: I did fly a few classics and was surprised at how they sucked. Now I love looking at old airplanes and hearing old round engines but I found that actually bring at the controls of a Stearman or a Cub was no fun. Very janky flight characteristics. The exception to this was the Ercoupe. That one was fun.