What are your favorite and least favorite planes?

Favorite plane of all time is the SR71 and as luck would have it that's the project being assembled animation by animation and system by system at this very moment , my least favorite is always the project just finished , I am typically absolutely burnt out from overexposure.

 

Best CJ

Loved the modern looking Cessna Cardinal and the Cessna 337 (the push me pull you).  Favorite experimental plane is the Velocity XL.  Favorite light jets are the Eclipse 550 and the Citation 550.  Favorite large biz jet is the Gulfstream.  Favorite commercial jet I have flown on is the Boeing 767, followed by the L1011.  I love the Embraer 170/190, the CRJ 700/900, and especially the looks and design of the Boeing 787.  Favorite military jet, modern age is the F16, vintage age the F86 and the Mig 15, and piston fighter, the P38 lightning and the P51.  Finally favorite WW1 fighter was the Albatross, and favorite vintage aircraft of all, Alberto Santos Dumont's small airplane.

John

For general flying, the C337. Even though the cowl flaps have no effect in the Carenado model, it's my "go to" most of the time. Have many many hours in the VRS F/A-18E, a surprisingly easy aircraft to avigate and navigate.  Love the L-39 and the T-38A for their challenges to piloting skills. My favorite piston single of all time was the Saab Safir...alas, no longer supported and dropped when I stopped using FSX.

Favorite Commercial Airliner: Boeing 777-300ER

Favorite Helicopter: Boeing CH-47D Chinook

Favorite Warbird: Boeing B-29 Bomber

Favorite General Aviation: Cessna Skyhawk

Favorite Seaplane: Grumman G-21 Goose

 

Least Favorite Plane: McDonnell Douglas MD-80

I am so glad to see those loud, old, outdated, gas guzzlers go

Fave chopper is (obviously) the Bell UH-1D/H Iroqouis (aka the Huey)

Fave prop airliner is (obviously) the Douglas DC-3 (aka the Dakota/C-47)

Fave jet airliner is the Boeing 727.

Fave GA aeroplane is the Bellanca Viking.

Fave glider is the Bielsko SZD 50-3 (aka the Puchacz)

Fave jet warplane is the North American F-86A (aka the Sabre)

Fave piston warplane is the Boeing B17G (aka the Flying Fortress)

Least favourite aeroplane (very specific this one, because I have to work on it on a regular basis) has to be Thomas Cook Airlines Airbus A321-211, registration number LY-VED, because it has cargo holds which were set up for ULDs which are plated over with steel panels with cutout lift holes in them so they could be quickly removed. TC airlines use ULDs on their A330s but not on their A321s, so this makes LY-VED a right pain in the neck to load/unload individual bags onto because they always snag on the floors and get stuck in those lift holes and you quite often injure yourself freeing them up. All their other A321s are just fine apart from that one, but LY-VED always elicits a groan (and often quite a few swear words from everyone) whenever we see it taxi up to the gate. It's a perfectly fine aeroplane apart from that, but it is without doubt my least favourite aeroplane and I have the cuts and bruises from it to prove it lol.

 

 

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by Chock

Favorite Commercial Airliner: Vickers Super VC10 1100 (sooooo many others I could choose though: HS.748, BAC One-Eleven, DH.89 Dragon Rapide, HPR7 Dart Herald, 757-200, L1011-200, SE210 Caravelle VI-R, Saab 2000...)

Favorite Helicopter: AS365 Dauphin II

Favorite Warbird: Avro Vulan B2 (English Electric Lightning F6 as a close second)

Favorite General Aviation: Robin DR400 (Cessna 177 Cardinal II as a second choice)

Favorite Seaplane: Short Empire

Least Favorite Plane: 737 MAX9. Thrice reheated leftovers and should've been the MAX10 spec.

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by ckyliu

If you mean addon planes in flightsims then the Dash-8 Q400 is my favorite plane EVER. By far.

Reason 1: it keeps me busy and hence entertained all the time.

Reason 2: I have the idea I can know and control it completely, unlike Boeings and Airbusses which have way to many buttons and switches and screens. Everything there is in the Q400 I can understand, know, use, etc. It's manageable. The MCDU screens of the Airbus already (when simulated completely) contain a lot of stuff I can't get to grips with. Some planes simply are too complicated. The Q400 I can get to grips with totally and I really like that. I don't like it if I use something without knowing how to use it completely. 😉 For me the Q400 is some sort of perfect compromise between a simple GA plane and a complicated airliner. I love it.

Reason 3: it is modelled superbly by Majestic in P3D but it's also the best modelled plane in Aerofly FS 2. (With the cold and dark mod I made for AFS2 I can use my Majestic 'to do list' almost completely, apart from GPU and FMS related stuff.)

If you mean real planes then the Q400 wouldn't be my favorite because it looks kinda odd... I really had to get over that before I purchased it for P3D LOL

 

My  favorite  by  far  is  in dcs being  the  Hornet:) 

In real life, the SR-71 takes the cake.  I highly recommend a book called "Skunk Works"- like all good things that book got loaned out and never returned.  I was at the officer's club at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana around 1982 and asked a pilot at the bar, if you could choose any plane in the Air Force to fly, what would it be.  He didn't hesitate - the SR-71 Blackbird.  This was back in the day.  You'd be surprised how many ladies would hang out up there just to make themselves available to the pilots - hoping for a long-term relationship really- divorced officer's wives most of them, but we'd hang out and drive the drunk ones home, some of them my friend's moms.

I'm also kind of partial to the old B-52s, as I had the pleasure of growing up with them and crawling around the inside of those word not alloweds on a few occasions.

Flight Simulator-wise, I started on the Commodore 64 (Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator II....and anyone remember "Jet"?) and owned most everything since then, but I had long, decent stretches with both the Level-D Sim 767 for FS9, and as of late, lots of good times in PDMG 737.

Mark

 

6 minutes ago, mtrainer said:

In real life, the SR-71 takes the cake.  I highly recommend a book called "Skunk Works"- like all good things that book got loaned out and never returned.  I was at the officer's club at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana around 1982 and asked a pilot at the bar, if you could choose any plane in the Air Force to fly, what would it be.  He didn't hesitate - the SR-71 Blackbird.  This was back in the day.  You'd be surprised how many ladies would hang out up there just to make themselves available to the pilots - hoping for a long-term relationship really- divorced officer's wives most of them, but we'd hang out and drive the drunk ones home, some of them my friend's moms.

I'm also kind of partial to the old B-52s, as I had the pleasure of growing up with them and crawling around the inside of those word not alloweds on a few occasions.

Flight Simulator-wise, I started on the Commodore 64 (Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator II....and anyone remember "Jet"?) and owned most everything since then, but I had long, decent stretches with both the Level-D Sim 767 for FS9, and as of late, lots of good times in PDMG 737.

Mark

 

I bought "Jet" when it came out, was blown away by the speed.  There was another military sim at the time that had fantastic fps, but I cannot remember the name, I recall being either in a Phantom or a British fighter, and I ruled the skies with it, was in heaven until the sims of today, of course.  Today I flew the glider in Xplane11, was wonderful, the duet between the towplane and I, then flying nape of the earth, over the houses and trees, as I approached the airport in Elmira New York for landing.  I have flown in gliders in real life and felt safer in them than any other aircraft, I flew in them over the Napa Valley when the small town of Calistoga had its little gliderport, now closed down.  We would be towed south of Calistoga, then east towards the small mountains, about 2-3000 feet in elevation, over an area we called the Palisades.  We would ride ridge lift blown in from the Pacific, 30 miles to the west, and gain 1-2000 feet in altitude.  On very windy days the glider pilots would get clearance with ATC and fly high into the flight levels over Mt. St. Helena, upwards to 25,000 feet, they said they could see north to Mt. Shasta, and east to the Sierras.  We knew when the lenticular clouds appeared, that the gliders would be soaring to our north, and their pilots happy.  My favorite book of flight was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach, which described the beauty of flight like no other book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull

A far cry from the SR-71, but soaring in the skies, its all the same...

I've always had a soft spot for the DC-3. Such an iconic plane, and not too hard to fly in a good sim if you keep an eye on the manifold pressure and can finesse the ground handling. I flew in the real thing just once (well twice, there and back) -- a tourist flight to Canaima and Angel Falls in Venezuela, a long time ago. I still remember that flight and the sound of the engines.

Favorite helicopters should be the Bell 206 that I spent many real-life hours chartering for commercial photo shoots. Also some work in a Hughes 500, that's a sexy helicopter. But in the sim, I like the twins like Bell 412 for more stability and fancier features.

Jets... I dunno, I'm just not a fast mover fan, except in the combat sims. And even there, I like the old stuff like F-86 Sabre jets.

Favourite in a sim is Concorde and it used to be the same in the real world before October 2003.

it turned heads like no other commercial aircraft. One of the most beautiful aircraft to grace the skies.

Edited August 7, 20187 yr by Ray Proudfoot

As an aviation spotter, I have a longtime sentiment for 747 in any version, but also A340 (when I was growing my passion, the phrase 'four engines for longhaul' was so true and obvious).
Talking about modern planes, I simply love the whole Airbus series, both their silhouettes and the cockpit concept.

My favourites in the sim? FSL A320 (waiting for A321!). And MJS Q400 once in a while (when I feel like leaving my beloved jets for a moment).
I also like to fly PMDG NGX from time to time since it is a genuine sim classic plus I have gathered some hardware controllers for years, some of them being 737 cockpit equivalents. 😊

13 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I've always had a soft spot for the DC-3. Such an iconic plane, and not too hard to fly in a good sim if you keep an eye on the manifold pressure and can finesse the ground handling. I flew in the real thing just once (well twice, there and back) -- a tourist flight to Canaima and Angel Falls in Venezuela, a long time ago. I still remember that flight and the sound of the engines.

Favorite helicopters should be the Bell 206 that I spent many real-life hours chartering for commercial photo shoots. Also some work in a Hughes 500, that's a sexy helicopter. But in the sim, I like the twins like Bell 412 for more stability and fancier features.

Jets... I dunno, I'm just not a fast mover fan, except in the combat sims. And even there, I like the old stuff like F-86 Sabre jets.

I flew to Angel falls and into Canaima, but on a Cessna from Margarita Island, with a stop in San Jose.  I remember flying over the Orinoco river, with Enya's song Orinoco flow in my head, it was amazing, the river looked like a lake from our ten thousand foot altitude.  From Canaima we took a jeep tour into the rain forest, and we were instructed to walk barefoot to keep a firm grip on the slippery rock above one of the smaller waterfalls we were taken to.  We had a native guide, then they took us to a fabulous lunch.  Due to the season, August of 1990, Angel falls was just a trickle.  There were beautiful thunderstorms in the distance as we flew.  Coming in to San Jose we ran short on fuel and the pilots declared an emergency, but we made it, I could see how stressed they were but they acted professionally.  The airline was Avensa, a good airline, we flew in to Caracas on a 737-300 from JFK, great food and great service, my business partner and I loved them.  I am still close friends with the business partner I had on that trip today, we both moved from the SF Bay Area to Phoenix for separate careers, she in real estate and me in IT.  Our client in Venezuela, who worked out of Aruba and was IT manager for a hotel in Aruba and one on Margarita Island, also remains a good friend and is a contact of mine on LinkedIn.

John

P.S. Favorite copter of mine is the Robinson R44 which I enjoyed a flight on at an airshow in Goodyear Arizona some years ago, it was spacious and had an outstanding ride.  Also took a copter flight from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, also a wonderful journey.

Edited August 7, 20187 yr by John_Cillis