@Silvaire :) having flown both the 260D and the V35 I would suggest quite similar but the Beechcraft nicer harmonised. The Marchetti is designed as a jet trainer feel and a stable weapons platform, so not exactly sprightly.
I’ve flown both and the TB-30 too. The latter was also designed to fly like a jet and does so. All three of them felt straightforward, direct, pleasant and slightly heavy to me, with reasonable control forces but not a huge amount of excitement.
You need to try a dogfight in the TB30 if you want a bit of excitement.
Silvaire wrote:
A friend has an early M20C project plane and if I get a chance I would enjoy comparing it (as something closer to the Al Mooney original) to the late model high power stretched version.
In which case make sure that “positive control” is off before you do. Otherwise you may well find roll “very” stiff indeed :)
Silvaire wrote:
Based on experience, I’d also disagree with the linked article’s assertion that a Bonanza is the sweetest handling single yet built, apparently the author has never flown an RV-4, Bucker, Marchetti 260 etc.
I think it is like taste: You can disagree but not argue it. Some find heavy controls nicer, others like airplanes which can do a loop if you only think it should.
It is surely a matter of taste, and also being able to adapt to a different kind of flying and the planes designed for it. Flying different planes is a good way to remind yourself that they are not all the same, and some are markedly different from each other. Certification means little in this regard.
I also think that most plane designs we fly did not get a long term development program to refine their flying qualities as a primary objective. In that regard they kind of ended up where they ended up.
My friend’s M20C is an early one, I don’t think it was ever equipped with ‘positive control’ nor with the later ailerons that were fitted to reduce the effort to lift a wing manually.
Silvaire wrote:
My friend’s M20C is an early one, I don’t think it was ever equipped with ‘positive control’
The PC system was introduced in 1965. So it it is a 62 to 64 model it would not have it, most subsequent ones do have it.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
LOL, rumour has it, indirectly. While a Mooney was parked outside Piper’s plant for some thing it is said that some strange people went out with a measuring tape.
I thought the design was made by Al Mooney and sold to Piper. In fact, both versions of the story exist and we won’t find out which one is true. In the end of both stories I fly a big fat Mooney and that’s exactly what I was looking for for so many years 
UdoR wrote:
In the end of both stories I fly a big fat Mooney and that’s exactly what I was looking for for so many years
LOL, that is one way of putting it. But yea, the Comanches are great airplanes. My favorite always has been the Twin Comanche, which is something I wish Mooney would have thought of at well. Instead they pre-invented the Malibu with the M22.
