The Soviets are invading!

[Alfashark]

Working our way through the Antonov family at the moment... The Antonov An-14 Пчелка, "Little Bee". Designed to replace the An-2, it started its production in 1966 but it was all over for the Little Bee by 1972. Powered by two 300hp engines and using large flaps along with the automatic slats, it had extremely good STOL performance. Designed from the outset to be easily managed by the novice pilot, it was very stable and very forgiving - again, no stalling speed was quoted in the Flight Manual, allowing very steep approaches and extremely slow flight.

[Naki]

Nice pics Steve....must try that An-14 addon I have heard its real nice.

I have just realised I have been flying around in one of the best flight sim add ons for the last few months which also just happens to be a Cold War aircraft (the sig gives it away)...so when I have time

[Ian Warren]

Really gives you that Cold War feel , max speed 138 mph , NATO codenamed 'Clod' , with that configuration i'd guess the landing speed would in the 40 mph region .

[Alfashark]

QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Dec 15 2009, 02:04 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Really gives you that Cold War feel , max speed 138 mph , NATO codenamed 'Clod' , with that configuration i'd guess the landing speed would in the 40 mph region .

The book gives a "normal landing speed" of 49mph - seems about right for a power off approach, power on though and you can trickle it back even further.
Messing around at the first airport in the screens, I was getting down to 19kts with full flap and about 45% power

[Ian Warren]

We had a AN-2 display at Wanaka mid nineties , Heck , it was impressiive , guess just the type ,a 'biplane' but being as large as what it was , i could 't see the 'Clod' replacing it and i am guessing many stuck to the AN-2 .

[Alfashark]

We certainly have it good here in NZ! I'm told that in the states, while it is possible to own and fly an An-2 if it was Russian assembled, they are restricted to flights within 300 miles of their "home" airport and not permitted to land at any other airport The restriction doesn't apply to Polish assembled (PZL) variants... go figure

From the flight manual Ian, obviously with the throttle at idle - "If the engine quits in instrument conditions (blind flying when you can't see the ground) or at night, the pilot should pull the control column full aft (it won't stall) and keep the wings level. The leading-edge slats will snap out at about 64 km/h (40 mph), and when the aeroplane slows to a forward speed of about 40 km/h (25 mph), the aeroplane will sink at about a parachute descent rate until the aircraft hits the ground."

[Alfashark]

Now for something completely different... The PZL Mielec M-15 Belphegor - the only jet powered biplane, and the only jet powered agricultural aircraft.
No matter which side of the Iron Curtain you were on, you were dependent on crops for food and trade... Wanna make 'em grow quick, be free of pests? Probably going to want some fertilizer and pesticides applied then

The An-2 "R" variant was already in service as the main crop duster/spray, but the Soviets wanted something more modern, advanced and purpose built - oh, and they insisted it had to be jet powered!
First flew in '73 with full scale production beginning in '76 only 175 were built. All of the chemicals were stored in two hoppers that formed thick fairings between the upper and lower wings, with the spray being pressurised with bleed air from the single turbojet above the fuselage.
It was very noisy, slow and uneconomic to operate leaving nothing but a short, oddball mark in the history books.

[Ian Warren]

Tell ya one Steve .. you really are finding the oddballs

[Alfashark]

It's all good Ian, someone has to do it...

[Alfashark]

Better jump back to the other side... All these metric panels are giving me a headache

The Lockheed U2... The Dragon Lady... A day/night reconnaissance machine built to fly out of reach of the current crop of interceptors. How does a lazy 70,000' sound?
First flown (by accident) in 1955, it is still in service - although much reduced in later years. This flight, out of Groom Lake

[Naki]

Nice pics...Supposedly the hardest aircraft to land..so is the model like that? ...did you slew up to 70,000 or do you meander up there in real time?

[Alfashark]

Cheers Paul

Yep, it is a bit of a challenge! Just wants to keep on flying... Getting the touch-down pitch right is crucial - a fraction too much nose up and you're up and away... too little and it'll wheelbarrow before lifting off again

In this case I flew it up to FL400, then slewed up to FL600... Limited time lastnight - the last 10,000 takes forever - 135kias @ 100fpm. Stall occurs at about 130, overspeed at just over 140
Simply wont climb above FL550 with any more than 50% fuel either, so best just to head off on track with a very shallow climb from FL300.

[Charl]

Now "Wingman" Warren's recent promotion to Wing Commander Warren made me sit up and listen, when he put up the full list of links for the Bear
And it is a great set of models, the VC second to none:



We've had the Bear before in this, the greatest flightsim thread ever known...

But one of the Samdim packages includes a refueling AI model of the Myasishchev 3M-T, NATO reporting name: Bison
I don't think that one has appeared here.
Quite a neat conversion of the bomb bay into a hose reel!



All the B-52 cues are there, too.
There was a nuclear-powered variant planned, and the US took great fright at the prospect.

[Splitpin]

Wow.....Charl Im really enjoying all the Russian stuff from Samdim....but i missed the refuel model.
Just been looking back at the rest of this thread....my god, its amazing


Marty

[Ian Warren]

I did like this 'TU' so much ... one off the first to have windows icing up as you climbed different flight levels .. talk about a real cold war warrior

[hasegawa]

We can´t stop this thread...let´s do something...

This Su 27 ist available at flight1.com for FS X.

[Ian Warren]

Great to see ya back Hasegawa , I do wonder how many of these Wicked Weapons as models sit on your shelf at home

[hasegawa]

I write for the german FS-Magazin and it is my job to "test" russian aircraft and write about it. But not only aircraft. I like the russian freeware-sceneries You can find at www.avsim.su. It is a sad thing, that we have the wonderful ORBX-Sceneries, but nothing equal about Russia. Give me the Kamchatka and Yakutia or the Caucasian region and something like an An 2, a Yak 12... a Mi 8 and i forget the Airliners completely... and have enough to do for the rest of the FS X-Time... Sadly, there is nearly nothing. And i like the Baltic, with its long beaches, the islands between Estonia and Finnland, the historical buildings and the wonderfull Landscape... After the Russians and the NATO are gone here it is so friendly... after war´s and rumors over the century´s and the soviet regime ... Yes I fly the military aircraft, but in reality I didn´t like them much. We have in a museum in Riga a collection of aircraft from soviet times ... but now the smal Latvia has no Fighter Aircraft. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are under the umbrella of the Air Policing Baltikum of the NATO... Well, latvia has less inhabitants as Berlin alone... and not the ressources for a powerfull air arm.

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (hasegawa @ Mar 21 2011,8:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are under the umbrella of the Air Policing Baltikum of the NATO... Well, latvia has less inhabitants as Berlin alone... and not the ressources for a powerfull air arm.

Deleting arm forces will bite some countries butt shortly , the Middle East is a classic , they keep scraping away , we might not be in the firing line but it happened in 1982 for the cry off a good flattop , the wish for still having the Ark Royal , we'll see .

[J7G]

This is easily my favourite thread. I'll have to start putting some pictures up when we gain our cap back.

Hasegawa, I went to avsim.su, managed to get the site in English but when I clicked on reviews it looked to be in Russian. Do you have an English translation of your review by chance? Or at least could you please put up some bullet points with your main thoughts?