#5 DC – 3’s I’ve jumped lots of them around the world from barely flying to plush seats and rock and roll stereo. The only thing better is a turboprop with a large door. They will always be my nostalgic favorite.
#4 C-123 Provider the early Expendables movies plane. The fun thing about this aircraft is how slow it goes on a jump run. I once spun an Air Force major out the door to say hi. Man, he didn’t like it. I didn’t understand. He survived, didn’t he? I left him alone after the promise of a court martial for attempted murder…
#3 C-130s various models. 100K air miles plus miles in C-130s from what we call slicks to COMBAT TALONs to an AC-130 Spectre. Got to fly in the first C-130A model before it joined other C-130s in the Davis-Monthan AFB boneyard in Tucson AZ.
#2 PT-17C biplane. A PT-17 conversion with standardized Army-Navy equipment. Another fun aircraft that was owned by a former Navy pilot turned United Captain.
#1 F33C Bonanza F33A certified for aerobatics. The plane was owned by a friend with too much time and money. Leaving the plane in the middle of an aerobatics demo was a first. And flying it from DC to Tampa while he slept, was amazing considering I hadn’t completed my solo yet. He was nuts but not that nuts, he took off and landed.
Here are a couple that didn’t make the top five but were unique.
Antonov AN-2 – Russian jump training biplane. It has a door in the floor you can spot from when it’s -25 outside! If the darn thing starts, it gets to jump altitude quickly then essentially stops climbing.
Lodestar – also known as a Lodestall if you got too many people behind the wing root before the pilot was ready. One day at the drop zone, the pilot rolled the plane and on the way to jump altitude and most of the jumpers thought we were going to die. Three of us, including me, knew the pilot whose day job was testing US Air Force C-130s. I’d see the video of Dennis rolling a 130 and treating the aircraft like a Cessna 172 at very low altitude.
BONUS VIDEO
As much as I like jumping from altitude, the wildest ride and biggest thrill of my jump life was when the Air Force/Air Guard pilots practiced “NAP of the Earth” During one training mission we flew from MacDill AFB (Shadow Tier HQ) NAP of the Earth all the way up the blue ridge to a small drop zone in West Virginia. 825 miles at 500 ft max altitude.
Here is video taken from a C-130 that illustrates how these aircraft and in particular the special operations MC-130H COMABT TALON perform infiltration as low as 250 ft in inclement weather.