I was lucky enough as a young child to see one of these working a high country farm - it was operating off a sloped runway and I was convinced it was going to crash as it landed uphill, then convinced it was going to crash after it took off after reloading due to how slowly it climbed - I can't find a definitive number, but I vaguely recall it had a take off speed that lurked around 50kt...
On the subject of top-dressers... ...I was privileged to see a turboprop equipped Fletcher FU-24 in action a couple of weeks ago, those pilots are very darn good at flying very low in hill country. Very loud and notable engine sound.
I remember seeing AirTruks operating as a kid too, they'd drive the ground truck in between the tail booms and fill it up with fertilizer through a canvas funnel. And some of the airstrips they operated out of were truly hair-raising, more ski jumps carved out of the side of a hill with a D4 than anything else.
For ugly aircraft, look up French pre-WWII military aircraft, things like the Amiot 143 (yes, that's a real aircraft, not an AI hallucination) or almost anything that Farman made, "let's put wings on an aviary!". I think the 143's main defense was that Bf110 pilots would be so distracted either boggling or laughing they'd forget to fire at it.
50 knots rotation is perfectly fine for a plane that size. A Cessna Skyhawk is certified to rotate at 55 knots fully loaded (and since the stall speed is around 40knots, for specialty take-offs like soft fields it's much lower, 50knots is more than enough).
See also the Caproni Transaero, which isn't totally ugly but is messy in a "maybe more wings is better? some pushing engines at the back?" kind of way.
The fairy gannet looks like two smaller airplanes clipping into each other. It looks like an AI from ten years ago generated an image of an airplane. It looks like they hired engineers who got their degrees in Kerbal Space Program and then paid them by the hour. "Even if it's broke, it doesn't have enough features yet."
You got to love that even its name is utilitarian.
This is such a cool story. Airplanes seem such a complex, standardized, full of red tape and elitist thing that such stories of hackers starting to pull random beams together and you get a thing that flies are pretty inspiring... And yet it also sound quite well thought. As usual, there is more than meets the eye
From all the examples in the comments, I'm learning that the most reliable way to make an extremely ugly aircraft is a stubby look where the body is tall and the rear half seems to just end early.
9 fatalities in 88 incidents from 1967-2010 of 138 built 1966-1993.
It's possible some are still intact and maybe a couple are still flyable. The only recent evidence any maybe still intact is a 2017 photo of ZK-CVB on static museum display at MOTAT NZ.
> agricultural airplanes don’t make money when they are on the ground
Neither do any other airplane types. Airliners, for example, are designed to minimize the need for maintenance and the fastest turnaround, because an airliner loses money at a prodigious rate when it sits on the ground.
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On the subject of top-dressers... ...I was privileged to see a turboprop equipped Fletcher FU-24 in action a couple of weeks ago, those pilots are very darn good at flying very low in hill country. Very loud and notable engine sound.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_FU-24
For ugly aircraft, look up French pre-WWII military aircraft, things like the Amiot 143 (yes, that's a real aircraft, not an AI hallucination) or almost anything that Farman made, "let's put wings on an aviary!". I think the 143's main defense was that Bf110 pilots would be so distracted either boggling or laughing they'd forget to fire at it.
https://airtractor.com/aircraft/at-802a/
The M-15 is still uglier. Also intended as a cropduster, though unlike the AirTruk it was really bad at that job in every way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFW_Floh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlyO9cJ8hiQ (Alexander the ok: PZL Mielec M-15: One of the Aircraft of All Time)
That is, as well, an ugly plane, but once I parachuted out of one a couple of times, it grew on me.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_B-54
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Gannet
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/05/13/the-strange-barrel...
It looks like it really wants to scoop up a large amount of plankton mid-cruise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caproni_Ca.60
> pushing engines at the back
Weird aircraft with a pusher engine? Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender, right this way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss-Wright_XP-55_Ascender
(and check out the list of similar aircraft)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkJOm1V77Xg - video by 'Mustard'
The Belphegor is still uglier though.
This photo though, I see what you mean.
https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/z3envi/the_pzl_m1...
The AEW version looks ok
https://altitudepost.com/the-plane-without-wings-what-happen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleopter
> airtruk
You got to love that even its name is utilitarian.
This is such a cool story. Airplanes seem such a complex, standardized, full of red tape and elitist thing that such stories of hackers starting to pull random beams together and you get a thing that flies are pretty inspiring... And yet it also sound quite well thought. As usual, there is more than meets the eye
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Super_Guppy
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica
It's possible some are still intact and maybe a couple are still flyable. The only recent evidence any maybe still intact is a 2017 photo of ZK-CVB on static museum display at MOTAT NZ.
https://aviation-safety.net/asndb/type/PL12
https://www.airhistory.net/photo/896371/ZK-CVB
> agricultural airplanes don’t make money when they are on the ground
Neither do any other airplane types. Airliners, for example, are designed to minimize the need for maintenance and the fastest turnaround, because an airliner loses money at a prodigious rate when it sits on the ground.
aussie plane makes me think of the aussie flyer in the road warrior. (not even the same, but spiritually)
I thought everybody used aluminum?