My favorites are WW II aircraft. I find the diversity of shapes and colors irresistable.
They were designed in an age when the formula had yet to be written. Post-war aircraft, to my eyes, became homogonized. Form follows function, and the choices for form have been trimmed to just a few variables.
I also prefer the different camouflage schemes. I an bored to tears with the grays and blacks of today.
Give me a WW II bird any day !
If it has wings it has my attention, period. rangerj
Personally, I think the middle jets are pug ugly, stuff like the canberra, panther, and lightning (english, that is). I have done some helos, jets and both types of tanks, but generally prefer ww2 stuff. There is to me a something in their design that later things dont appear to have.
Ouch![:0] That hurts! I agree that the EE Lightning is a design that has to grow on you, but the Canberra: ugly??? Nonono my friend, you got that all wrong. That sleek bubble cockpit, those nicely rounded fuselage lines, those engines perfectly blended into the wings [8D]. How can you look at that beauty and not get a lump in your throat? As a matter of fact, the USAF back in the day must have thought the same, because they had to have some as well. Of course they proceeded to ‘fixing’ it by adding a funky canopy and then kept pulling on the wings to make it fly higher, so in the end (RB-57F), it WAS ugly, but that’s not the point here[:D].
The good ol’ WW2 props are magic! They looked like the were
designed in comic books.With their funky paint schemes and
slender lines they are spectacular.
Modern jets have a different appeal ,often shaped like an arrow and
loaded with brute force.
A very pretty modern jet? …how about a twin seater Gripen?
I’m in with rangerj.
I have a tendancy to lean more towards jets, just because they look fast and when loaded for bear, look real mean. As a kid, riding horse with my uncle in Texas, we used to get some great unexpected airshows from phantom phlyers - out of the sun at 400 ft across the plane with the throttle at full bore, spooking the horses…man still gives me the shivers of excitement when I think about it.
Not all jet aircraft are ugly. Just look at the F-86, F-8, F-100, Hawker Hunter and F-104. They look like sleek winged birds of flight, ready to pounce on an easy meal. The later jet aircraft tended to go from sleekness to brute overweight flying monsters. But then, even some of them looked good. My favorite is the F-4, not only because I spent over 20 years working on it, but because of its ability to do any thing it was called on to do. It may not have excelled in all, but it did them well, with what we had to work with.
I grew up at the end of the prop era and the dawn of the jet age. I can remember seeing P-51’s flying out of the FANG field near home. The pop of their RR engines on takeoff and landing are still fresh in my memory. However seeing the same field with the sleek F-86 taking off has a far lasting memory.
So I would have to say new. Or I should say older new.