What was the most demanding airplane you have flown handling wise?
For me it was the Grumman Turbo Goose.
I found the Tiger Moth difficult to fly (i.e.: to land and to take off).
For me it was the Grumman Turbo Goose.
I had to look that one up….
ok, so what made it difficult to fly? I can see you wouldn’t want to fly loops in it…. 
I found the Goose (I flew one with the radial engines) pretty easy to fly, and to land on water, but it took me a while to land the Buecker Jungmann.
The Fokker F27 on one engine !
so what made it difficult to fly? I can see you wouldn’t want to fly loops in it….
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It was a real hand full during take off on land due to the power of the turbines and their location, it required three turns of rudder trim to start the take off which had to be re trimmed as you gained speed.
It cruised only a few knots below VMC, due to the excess power.
It was very difficult to see to the left or right when turning due to the engines being way out in front.
It tended to porpoise on take off if you were careless with power application.
It was very unstable in icing at gross weight due to the high cruise speed, in fact it could become uncontrollable unless you slowed way down.
And it was almost impossible to dock single pilot because the turbine engines do not spin down when you shut down the engine and it is extremely dangerous because the props are so close to the dock.
But it was a real rocket ship once you learned to master it.
I flew a Fokker DR1 Triplane replica at Chino CA once – it never wanted to go in a straight line!
Extra then a Bambi then a Husky based entirely on handling not complexity.
Pitts S2. I only had about 100h at the time which didn’t help though!
A lot of criticism on Fokker planes. Hmm, that doesn’t make my heart beat any faster as a Dutch national, and a long time Fokker employee!
Fokker himself apparently did not think his planes were that difficult to fly, witnessed by his easy circling of Haarlem’s church tower. Funny story, which I suppose (well, hope) is true: I believe it was in the nineties that a copy of Fokker’s first plane, the ‘spider’ was built. One of Fokker’s test pilots, obviously one of the best of the company took it up accompanied by a light plane to make some air-to-air shots. The test pilot, scarf and all, smiled into the camera. Great pictures.. Once on the ground, when the photographers congratulated the pilot on the great flying and cool laughing face he said something like: "laughing, LAUGHING? Man, that was a nervous grimace! Scared sh*tless flying this contraption! First and last time! Or words to that effect.
