China has had domestic ejection seas since at least the 1970s.

-1-
Can anyone decide on his/her’s own birth?

-2-
Is suicide considered a serious option, or is it well-respected by society?

-3-
Can you choose your family, the country in which you’re born, or even the amount of skills (physical, intellectual, social) with which you are born?

If you answer yes to all these questions, you can believe you have control of your own life. For the rest: life is not what you make it, it is what you can scrape out of it.

😎

The aviation-related stuff to be found on my walls:

– Three early Soviet propaganda pics (one Civil War era 1918-1921, one Collectivisation of around 1925, one for the OSAVIAKHIM which was a predecessor of DOSAAF and a paramilitary national flying club, from around 1925 too).

– A “Den’ Kosmonavtika” clock, officially in rememberance of Yuri Gagarin but with that whole wave of red rockets flying on it, one would guess it’s a bit more sinister.

– A metal Red Star, coming from one of the gates from Finow-Eberswalde airbase in former East Germany

-A Soviet parade flag, all kitched up.

-A DDR flying map, with all the corridors and such plus the flight of an NVA Mi-8 plotted on it.

– A squadron print with Tornados from 9, 14, 17 and 31 sqn to commemorate RAF Brüggen

– A squadron print with Phantoms from 19 and 92 sqn to commemorate RAF Wildenrath

– A photo of a mass flight of 20 F-104s over Volkel with four more on the ground

Nah, the ‘Dutch’ paintjob isn’t a splinter scheme, and as far as i know it was never called that way either. Splinter schemes have far smaller, sharp-edged patches. The Swedish Viggens (and some helos too) being a prime example of course, but the Ukrainian and Eritrean Su-27s also have nice splinter schemes. And don’t forget that Czech MiG-21, which is one of the few aircraft painted in a grey-splinter-air-superiority-scheme (if not the only one, the other ones i can think of all have blue in it).

And for those who have missed the revelation of the Eritrean Flanker a year or so ago:

The C-130 and later series of Y-8 have one clear advantage over the An-12, which is a pressurised cargo hold. The Chinese had Lockheed have a look at the An-12/Y-8s rear fuselage, doors and ramp in order to make it pressurised, something the An-12 always lacked (although pressurised cabins were sometimes placed inside with special variants of the An-12).

This being said, i have to note that the pressurised cargo hold of the Herk made it so much the success it never should have been, as it is now. Being designed as a tactical paratrooper dumper and tactical transport, the pressurised fuselage ment that loads and loads of countries thought it would make a neat ‘strategic’ transport, which of course it isn’t. While the underwing fuel tanks give it the range (and the up-engined E, H and J models give it the power), the Herc has a terrible drawback in it’s narrow cargo bay, which isn’t much of a problem for a TACTICAL transport, but can get a bit annoying if you use your Herks as your main transport aircraft. No guesses why IL-76es and An-124s are so regularly leased by Western airforces.

With the success of the Hercules, Lockheed repeated the cargobay mistake with the C-141 before they got it right with the C-5. The Russians didn’t really use the An-12 in a strategic role: when they slowly started moving beyond the WarPac the An-22 was the strategic bird, and later the IL-76 gave the necessary lifting (weight+size+range) capability.

And now we’re led to believe the C-130J is the superplusgoodest transporter available…

But the Il-102 is RAM-N from what i know. I don’t have a candidate for RAM-Q…

Yeah, it’s pretty agile when it’s empty and it has enough fuel to engage the burners. Not as agile as the Vulcan though 🙂

And also because the EH101 has already won that competition twice, but got canned for political reasons both times.