Pilots love their airplanes (was P-51's, Aces: A Special Gathering)

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:03:15 -0700, Rob Arndt wrote:
On Aug 21, 8:49?pm, J a c k wrote:

Don't you think the "Experten" would have done even better with
Spitfires, or Mustangs?

No Jack, b/c the German pilots tested those captured a/c and preferred
their own a/c which they knew intimately. [...]

I believe they did what was right- stick to your own well-known a/c
that you have bonded with.

The thing is, almost every pilot thinks the aircraft he or she
flies the most (or the one he has to fly) is the best ever,
even if it isn't.

I bet if you dug deep enough you could find records of some
French pilot circa 1939 saying he thought the Amiot 143 was
way better than those crates the poor *******s in some other
squadron had to fly, and that fighter pilots were a bunch of
wussies who didn't have the balls to fly bombers.

Here's a personal example. I got my pilot's license flying
Piper Tomahawks in 1981. Tomahawks have a generally crappy
reputation in the general aviation community.

They're not as forgiving as other training aircraft like the
Cessna 150/152 and Cherokee 140, and the FAA issued several
airworthiness directives (which often require expensive
modifications) for the Tomahawk within a few years of its
introduction. That's why some unkind folks call it the
"Traumahawk."

The Tomahawk's T-tail was all the rage back in the late
Seventies when Piper was sticking T-tails on everything,
but the T-tail makes the Tomahawk fishtail in even mild
turbulence.

For some reason, non-pilot passengers think this behavior is
very disturbing. It's hard to impress your girlfriend with
your mad pilot skillz when she's busy losing her lunch into
an airsickness bag.

Tomahawks are sloooooow. 75% cruise is something like 90
knots. This is great if you like spending half an hour on
a clear day with your destination in sight, watching it
creep slowly closer and closer. It's not so cool if that
same girlfriend wants to be back on the ground RIGHT NOW.

The fuel system has no "Both" setting. Even though the
fuel tank selector is this big red banana-shaped thing in
plain sight right by the throttle quadrant, it's easy for a
student pilot to get busy doing other stuff and forget to
switch tanks. My instructor let me do that twice.

When you're humming along thinking everything is great and
imagining how your instructor must be admiring how smooth
your airwork is today, hearing the engine quit suddenly is
kind of disconcerting.

Luckily, the fuel selector is a big red banana-shaped thing
in plain sight, and the first item on the "Engine Failure"
checklist is "Switch tanks."

In spite of all that, I flew my first solo and private
checkride in a PA-38 and I still think it's a great little
airplane.

I've flown Cessna 152s and 172s, and I don't know how
anyone can stand pushing that stupid doorknob-shaped thing
into the panel to make the engine get louder. Real airplanes
have throttle quadrants with levers, not doorknobs, and their
wings are on the bottom so you can see where you're going in
a turn.

Tomahawks rule, dude!

Worked for the German Experten. Every co-belligerent and Axis
partner that the Germans sold 109s to complained about the fighter
and scored nowhere near what the German aces did.

In other words, the pilots who had to fly them every day
thought they were the absolute bestest aircraft ever, and
everyone else who wasn't emotionally attached to the Me-109
knew it had issues.

The Germans could have cared less what their allies thought
and made no attempt to modify those a/c.

Even Experten occasionally wiped out Me-109s out in landing
accidents caused by the poorly designed landing gear.

And wasn't it Adolf Galland himself who told Hermann Goering
he'd rather be commanding a squadron of Spitfires?


ljd