alt.hn

3/18/2026 at 4:52:58 PM

The Ugliest Airplane: An Appreciation

 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/ugliest-airplane-appreciation-180978708/

by randycupertino

3/21/2026 at 4:01:59 AM

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_FU-24

by EdwardDiego

3/21/2026 at 6:56:40 AM

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).

by hawtads

3/21/2026 at 9:40:14 AM

The part where it's carrying about a metric ton of phosphate while still being able to take off at that speed is really blows my mind.

by EdwardDiego

3/21/2026 at 9:13:36 PM

This plane appears to be a (the?) leading crop duster today. It carries over 4 tons of payload.

https://airtractor.com/aircraft/at-802a/

by pfdietz

3/22/2026 at 3:03:34 AM

Yes but that's got a powerful turboprop.

by wolvoleo

3/21/2026 at 5:06:54 PM

Well, hope they reinforced the wings, that's a massive weak point for dusters.

by hawtads

3/22/2026 at 6:44:46 AM

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.

by pseudohadamard

3/21/2026 at 3:40:03 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL_M-15_Belphegor

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.

by mastax

3/21/2026 at 9:08:18 AM

You are off your rocker dude; the Belphegor is weird, but certainly not ugly. You want certified ugly? You'll find it under the synonym DFW T.28 Floh.

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

by spankibalt

3/21/2026 at 1:53:47 PM

I dunno about ugly, I'd call it a "Chibi Biplane".

by chuckadams

3/21/2026 at 9:56:51 AM

Looks like a sun fish.

by postepowanieadm

3/21/2026 at 9:12:12 AM

I have a lot of fondness for the AN-2 that this airplane aimed to replace.

That is, as well, an ugly plane, but once I parachuted out of one a couple of times, it grew on me.

by RealityVoid

3/21/2026 at 3:47:17 AM

I'll raise you the Blackburn B-54 [0] and the Fairey Gannet [1].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_B-54

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Gannet

by EdwardDiego

3/21/2026 at 7:39:41 AM

And I shall raise you the Stipa Caproni

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/05/13/the-strange-barrel...

by taylorius

3/21/2026 at 9:43:20 AM

I think this one is winning the inverse beauty contest.

It looks like it really wants to scoop up a large amount of plankton mid-cruise.

by EdwardDiego

3/21/2026 at 4:04:03 AM

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."

The Belphegor is still uglier though.

by fwipsy

3/21/2026 at 9:59:06 AM

I don't know, it's kinda slick looking - if you ignore the pylons.

by postepowanieadm

3/21/2026 at 5:07:27 AM

That image made me smile. Yeah, it would be bad at being a plane with poles attached to it like that. I'll see myself out now

by dylan604

3/21/2026 at 4:19:30 AM

> 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

by charles_f

3/21/2026 at 5:06:34 AM

> 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...

As a kid, I was introduced to the concept of ultralight[0] aircraft when me and a couple of friends stumbled upon a wreck of one in a field. Our parents realized it had to have come from the local place a few miles away. If your aircraft qualifies as ultralight, you do not need a license to fly it. A family friend of my parents had one that he'd roll out to the street, attach the wings, and take off, and then land back on the street, remove the wings, and roll it back into his garage.

These things were essentially go-karts with wings.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_aviation

by dylan604

3/21/2026 at 11:01:49 AM

The red tape and standarization is only proportional to the liability, making things fly isn't all that hard.

One thing my son has always been obsessed with was planes. We started with paper planes, mainly the classic squarey one I learnt in school that has good balance of speed/airtime and tolerance to launching speeds and angles.

But he got bored and wanted more. We got deep in the rabbit hole of purely paper folding planes (and rockets), with regular visits to Ojimak[0] for more ambitious projects (they're 3D, glued, yet actually flying paper models).

Our latest endeavours involve keeping large Amazon delivery boxes to later take measurements, calculate weight balance, and creating airfoils by stacking several layers of cardboard in a tapered way to make gliders to throw outside (over 1m wingspan!).

In one of our walks we saw a man trying to put order in his garage; it was literally overflowing with home made RC planes, some were copies of standard designs, some quite unorthodox and some just plain head-scratching weird. We talked for a bit, he didn't even have technical background, and I was sold. Obviously it gets more expensive in terms of time and money, but I can't wait for my son to be old enough to dedicate time together in this direction.

[0] https://ojimak01.ehoh.net/hanger.html

by fer

3/21/2026 at 11:11:46 AM

As a kid in the 90s I discovered indoor free flight(1). It's a hobby where you build flying machines with balsa wood and carburator paper, and you power them with elastic bands using an old clock mechanism. Then people compete to see which airplane flights for the longest time, some flying for over 30 minutes!

This was magical to me. My "mentor" was able to build tiny butterfly-like contraptions with four flapping wings, and many other flying machines of different kinds.

Maybe this is interesting to your family as well!

(1) https://indoorfreeflight.com/

by brainlessdev

3/21/2026 at 11:41:10 AM

Oh thanks! We've made small gliders and those butterflies with rubber bands, but I never thought that mode of operation went that far. It makes sense to use something that requires higher torque like clock mechanism to limit the speed of the blades/wings, the basic builds don't fly that well or for long precisely because the faster you spin (more twists) the less effective the angle of attack is, with gliders you need a somewhat precise alignment in terms of twists+launching speed in order for them to fly just ok!

by fer

3/21/2026 at 5:34:43 AM

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.

by recursivecaveat

3/21/2026 at 12:27:30 PM

If you invert what people's expectations are for aircraft, you'll get a lot of detractors.

Some like the Long-EZ, some see a face only a mother could love.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ

by projektfu

3/21/2026 at 4:09:50 AM

Steve Death does sound like a Mad Max name.

by pfdietz

3/21/2026 at 3:28:47 PM

> 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.

by WalterBright

3/21/2026 at 3:00:36 AM

It looks kinda cute if you ask me

by ziofill

3/21/2026 at 3:05:13 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transavia_PL-12_Airtruk

aussie plane makes me think of the aussie flyer in the road warrior. (not even the same, but spiritually)

by m463

3/21/2026 at 3:35:26 AM

This is mentioned in the article:

> But the airplane never became popular—although it became briefly famous when a heavily made-up example starred in 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

by pimlottc

3/21/2026 at 4:38:04 AM

I was referring to the copter pilot in the road warrior, same scrappy tininess.

beyond thunderdome was the next in the series.

by m463

3/21/2026 at 1:16:53 PM

Ah, I was getting my bodged-up post-apocalyptic Aussie aerial transports mixed up

by pimlottc

3/21/2026 at 3:13:54 AM

"He started with a large, steel, barrel-shaped tank and began adding."

I thought everybody used aluminum?

by chasil

3/21/2026 at 3:41:33 AM

It was designed to carry to operate from very rough "airstrips" which is a very optimistic term for "a paddock that the farmer hopefully mowed recently and if you're lucky, they also removed most of the bigger stones".

I also imagine in the postwar WW2 antipodes, steel was a lot easier and cheaper to access, as well as work.

by EdwardDiego

3/21/2026 at 3:38:48 AM

That was a prototype.

Update: I guess the final design also used steel.

> The pilot is above both the engine and the load, and is surrounded by a steel tube truss for maximum safety.

by macintux

3/21/2026 at 4:40:55 AM

Steel alloys have better fatigue properties than aluminum. Many of us in aerospace would happily use a corrosion-resistant steel if not for the weight.

by stackghost

3/21/2026 at 3:54:38 AM

Did anyone else think the first photo was AI-generated at first, due to how unusual it looked?

by userbinator

3/21/2026 at 4:44:00 AM

I actually think the Super Guppy[0] is the ugliest, hotly contested by the Optica[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Super_Guppy

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica

by stackghost

3/21/2026 at 5:08:05 AM

The Guppy is very ugly, but I think the Optica is quite nice — the large duct is a bit ugly, but the rest of it has good lines

by perilunar

3/21/2026 at 8:57:38 AM

I also like the Optica! It somehow has a lot of space vibes from Freelancer and FireFly. Shame of the large toy like duct indeed. But I suspect it works!

by spockz

3/21/2026 at 8:37:36 AM

The cockpit projects from the ducted fan?! That’s certainly a design.

by Sharlin

3/21/2026 at 3:29:02 PM

We doan need no steenkin' fuselage!

by WalterBright

3/21/2026 at 6:20:41 PM

Best part is no part

by mrDmrTmrJ

3/21/2026 at 3:37:29 AM

…can I still get one?

by JumpCrisscross

3/21/2026 at 5:21:25 AM

I like it

by thumbsup-_-

3/21/2026 at 5:12:27 AM

(2021)

by taspeotis