sorry I can’t read Russian, but I didn’t see others as you said F-16 or Tornado, except Cy-27 and F-15, so you may be cheating me

Russian isn’t my native language too, but that doesn’t stop me from understanding a typical combined instantaneous/sustained performance diagram. You don’t need to know russian to understand a diagram showing probably the most important maneuvering characteristics of combat a/c. That seems to be too complicated for you, despite this diagram is identical with what you will find in any western a/c flight manual, too. That shows what you know, buddy…

I am cheating you:D 😀 😀 😀

You see here only Su-27 and F-15 because the study is 51 pages and compares separately Su-27 with F-15, F-16 and Tornado

What is that smoke coming downwards near the exhaust?

That is most likely compressor secondary air – i.e. air that escapes through the small gaps between the various stator and rotor stages and enters in the central part of the compressor (between the rotor disks). That air is better to be evacuated.

The air appears white because is already compressed, and when escapes in the atmosphere through the ventral pipe it expands and forms condensation.

Sukhoi Su-25 are unpressurized, the typical mission profile was done flying low, so there was no need for pressurized cockpit.

But I read that during Afghanistan war because of the high altitude mountains the soviet pilots flying Su-25 were forced to fly routinely at much higher altitudes than they used to (not only for clearance above the terrain, but also due to Stinger threat) in no point during the entire flight except the attack phase the altitude above the terrain shoud be less than 2000 m IIRC.

As anyone can imagine, frequent exposure to low pressure inevitably created certain health problems to the pilots.

I got this ultimately expensive resin kit by Collect-Aire (yes, it is 1/48) and it is just too precious to start 😉 I cannot find enough courage to make the first cut.. 😉

You know, I was also thinking about buying one, not knowing anything about Collect Aire kits. I was thinking that at this price it must look stunning, being made by some fanatics that count every bolt and rivet. I like a lot this absolutely beautiful aircraft and since I already have the Italeri 1:72 I wanted smth better/bigger. But I found on F-16.net a topic about this kit and everybody who saw it said it’s pretty much a lousy, inaccurate kit. And I was pretty surprised to see that you find the kit “precious”… I don’t understand…

On Collect Aire website there were some pics of their 1:48 Su-24M, and it was quite obvious that K-36 seats headrests were pretty bulky, canopyes looked spartan, lots of things on the thick side, rounded stabilator corners… definitely not smth I would buy. I first thought it was just an accident, maybe it was built many years ago when good walkarouns for russian a/c were not available, but now I have read that topic about the YF-23 kit, and I won’t ever buy one.

What really amazes me is that on one hand Russia has continued expensive development of Fullback and is now fielding some machines, but on the other hand today russian Su-27 pilots are flying probably 20 hours a year…

How determined is really Russia to have a credible, capable air force? How many hours operational Fullback pilots will fly per year? They will be a lucky elite, and will receive adequate funding to train well, but for the “rest” of the russian air force pilots things will probably not change too much.

Isn’t that introduction in service of a new, complex aircraft actually a false coming back? How can a country in the same time have a pretty lousy state of the things in operational regiments, but to introduce a new tipe into service?

As you can see this ARU indicator is late type (single instrument), instead of two circular ones on earlyer a/c. The scales: to the left СTАБИЛ (stabilator), and to the right РУЧКА (control column) and no numbers on the scales. The air intakes have scales 0 to 10, for 0 to 100%. Also to the right of the cabin altimeter is a small instr – voltmeter.

Unfortunately P/PD versions cockpit pics seems quite rare, I don’t have any others. Seems like the best available so far are on this page. I would also like to get some new ones 🙂

NPP – HSI, also has ILS bars and K, Г flags
KPP – combined director/attitude indicator
DA-200 – well-known combined instr, present on all a/c from MiG-21 to -31 and other a/c

The a/c has 2 baro altimeters: the above (big) one has a rotating knob and is set before take off on 0 to show altitude relative to the airfield. The second (small) one shows alt relative to sea level, to have another reference for example when cruising, but the take off airfield was let’s say 1500 m above sea level, so the 2 instruments will show a different thing.

Also there are instruments not visible in the picture – above KPP there is a dual indicator – the position of air intakes adjustable ramps. To the left of last mentioned instrument there are two small circular indicators (or one double indicator on late-series machines). These are the ARU indicators. The ARU is a device that changes the transmission ratio from control column to stabilator for pitch control, according to flight conditions. But there isn’t just one indicator like ARU-3V in MiG-21, there are two: “control column” and “stabilator”. For more details about ARU check “MiG-25RB practical aerodynamics” manual from http://www.airwar.ru. The manual contains a brief descr of the control system.