Which aircraft will never make anyones MSFS wishlist? Nominations required

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Just a bit of fun. This forum needs fun. Heck, 2020 needs fun. Anyway, there have been several ‘wishlist’ threads for planes we’d like to see. This one’s different. Nominate planes you hope will never get modelled, and explain why.

Rules (subject entirely to my discretion, and subject to the fact that I can’t enforce rules anyway):

  • (1) Has to be a real aircraft that has flown at least once.

  • (2) Must post at least a (public domain/open licence) photo or a link to further details. And if it isn’t immediately obvious from appearance alone, tell us why you are nominating it.

  • (3) Keep it light hearted. If you don’t like Northrop Grumman because of what they (allegedly) did to Oleg Maddox (don’t ask), or have an intense dislike for Airbus because they make pilots feel unwanted, you are entitled to your opinion. Just don’t use this thread to explain it. I’m looking for engineering incompetence and what-the-heck-did-they-do-that-for aircraft design at its finest, not diatribes on corporate skullduggery.

  • (4) No posting that weird Polish jet-powered-biplane-cropduster thing. I’d actually like to fly one. Not in real life (heck no!), but in-sim, where I can find out if it was quite as bad an idea as it seems. And nothing by Blohm und Voss, because that’s too easy.

  • (5) If you don’t like this thread, ignore it…

A trio of examples to get the thread started (I may post more, if the thread doesn’t die from lack of response, or get removed as gratuitous eyeball-damage). All British, but that’s just coincidence. Mostly…

Firstly, I present the magnificent Beardmore Inflexible. A triumph of design, if the intention was to design something the size of a B-29 that looked like it was powered by a giant rubber band:

Secondly, the Supermarine Nighthawk. Supermarine made some beautiful aircraft. This one wasn’t. It was intended to shoot airships down. Couldn’t climb high enough to get to them. Or fly fast enough to catch them if it did:

And to prove that what-the-heck aircraft design survived the too-many-wings era, a nice little prototype. The prone-pilot Gloster Meteor. Not a bad test-bed concept in of itself (you don’t always know how bad ideas are until you’ve tried them), or even spectacularly ugly for its era (I could name a few aircraft that went into serial production that were worse). Just not the sort of thing that anyone would ever want in a sensible sim. Not unless you are desperate for realism, but due to an embarrassing injury to your nether regions, unable to fly sitting down. I never did figure out how the pilot was supposed to use the rudder pedals:

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Whatever the hell this is?

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It’s what it says on the side: a Carvair.

It’s what you get when you convert a DC-4/ C-54 into a specialised car transporter. Hack the front off, replace it with a door, and cobble together a cockpit over the opening.

Of the 21 conversions made, 8 were written off in crashes, though some at least were probably more due to ‘operator error’ than to anything inherent in the concept. It was entirely possible (as with most aircraft) to stuff more into them than could be relied on to stay in the air if you ran into difficulties. Or just ran out of runway. And some of the owners of these beasts seem to have had rather optimistic views regarding their capabilities.

A standard DC4 or C-54 for MSFS would be most welcome. I can’t see there being much demand for these though. Probably deserves to be included here. Any more suggestions, folks?

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https://www.evergreenmuseum.org/the-spruce-goose

This this doesnt look like any fun..

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Yeah. Maybe I should have said ‘flew beyond ground affect’ in the rules I posted. I didn’t though, so it qualifies.

On the other hand, in an alternate-history world where massive flying boats didn’t get superseded by conventional aircraft making use of all the nice long runways that WW2 had provided, it could have become more than a monument to too much money and not enough common sense. Though I suspect that in the same alternate reality, the potential buyers might have preferred something made out of aluminium.

A controversial suggestion maybe. Keep them coming…

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No place to put the airline logo and tail number.

Leonardo
Leonardo364×236 30.3 KB

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Don’t think that passes rule 1. :wink: Or complies with basic physics for that matter, since there doesn’t seem to be anything to counteract torque. Not that Da Vinci can be blamed for that. A clever guy, but he had to work with what he knew.

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Can’t decide which is worse:


Caproni Stipa - I don’t know where to begin. I simply cannot understand how this plane ever came to be. I’ve been to the Caproni aircraft museum and have seen so many beautiful designs there. So this came to me as a shock


Boeing EB 707 Phalcon
It is based on a Boeing 707, which IMHO is one heck of an elegant airliner. So this abomination ruins its legacy.

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Ah yes, the Caproni Stipa (or Stipa-Caproni - I think the name changed depending which end of it you were looking down, or something…). Seems to have actually worked, up to a point. Glorious low-speed handling, but any efficiency gains diminished to nothing once you got to cruise speed.

As for the Phalcon, it’s an AWACS aircraft, meant for nosing around at altitude, to see what’s up. This one just looks the part. :smiley: