From the days when aircraft were designed by men with pencils.

Some of my favourites

Fairey Gannett

De Havilland Sea Vixen

Blackburn Beverley

Not sure I agree with the Sea Vixen, I think it’s a really nice looking plane.

Does moder-ish ugly count

Binners – that’s a lovely plane, as is the sea vixon

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/middle/2/7/3/0578372.jpg

Not sure I agree with the Sea Vixen, I think it’s a really nice looking plane.

Good point, I’ve changed the title. I bet it was done by a man with a pencil and half moon glasses though.

All those posted so far are frankly awesome (except transapp’s abomination what is that?). I particularly like the grumman. Loved Hellcats when I was kid, must have made 20 odd of them.

Pretty much any 1930s French bomber, e.g.

the Flying Flea always struck me as being somewhat aesthetically lacking;

surely designed with a pencil. the merciful plane because it killed its pilot if crashed – no injured survivors

Looks like it’s from the Lada aviation division.

I love the Blackburn Beverley. Interestingly, I can’t stop looking at its over generous undercarriage (fnarf).

Not old school, but extra ugly!

are helicopters allowed?

Fair enough. I think the Hellcat was just unlucky in the company it tended to be seen in

Belphegor! I’d forgotten that one!

Ohhh brilliant.. Being near Calshot this is topical.. Seaplanes as you say built when men played with a 2B stuck behind thier right earlobe.

Vickers Viking

Transapp’s thing from Mad Max 3 rules my world.

I’m feeling a little bit “VietNam” this morning, so I present to you the OV-10 Bronco.

Not pretty, but one of the first model kits Iever made, and I quite like it.

And another, not fugly though (in my eyes)

Saunders-Roe SR45 Princess, again based at Calshot.

Not fugly, old school nostalgia for me

FYI the gannet has an interesting crash write up here.

Yeah baby!

Being a five owner, I suppose I’d better post something which half the world thinks is ugly, and the other half loves.
I present the original double ugly

I’m firmly in the awesome camp for the five and the ‘toom.

Blackburn Beverley

I’ve been in the pilot’s seat of one of those!

Does moder-ish ugly count

The A10 is awesome, “lets get a *** off big gun and build a plane round it!” Still flies full of holes and half it’s tail missing don’t it?

mmm can’t find an image but the first response by Mitchell to the RAF contract brief that that gave us the Spitfire wasn’t a looker. But look what did come out of it!

Boeing X-35. Should it have lost to Lockheed’s candidate? Discuss

Should it have lost?
Yes.
Call that a nose, this is a nose! 😀

When the rest of the world turned up for the gliding championships in wooden, barn dorr type gliders ze germans turned up in this:

Lovely if completly unsafe!

And as an interesting side note, my first solo was in that exact Puchaz glider FXQ in the background

The most beautiful ugly flying boat:

Forty years on and I can still remember the contents of the Airfix catalogue..

Westland Lysander

Bristol Beaufighter

Saab Draken

Well if we’re talking about noses…

Old, but not ugly:

Old, not ugly and very shiny:

Design with a Soviet space pen. not quite a plane or a boat, but both and neither. They also had the best name for anything ever: Ekranoplan.
If bikes were called Ekranoplans instead of bikes, roads would have painted car lanes next to the pavement and we would have the middle, and we would be allowed on motorways.

Ekranoplan, ugliness in motion;

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjn3gW0dvf8&feature=related[/video]

Silly Soviets

Il-40 for the prototype, the enngines flamed out when it fired its guns so it ended up looking like this!

Well I feel obliged to post those I own (radio controlled models of) – on the basis I’ve only bought ones I consider aesthetically pleasing:


I know this one has been done, but not in the more classic colour scheme I have:

Ian, I think I’ve jumped that Porter at Ampurias.

How about a little of this;

And some of this;
G-OVAN at Sibson

Jumped that too!