martinez05 and 10 are different to all other Su-34’s seen so far…..
They have an APU in the tailboom
They have addition wing fences
The curtains look more substantial than in previous examples.
They have that black camo……
I don’t know the answer – I’m just throwing things in for discussion.
I’ll try and dig out some more cockpit photos to show what I mean…
Ken
Those last Su-34 delivered in december 2011, not only those 05 and 10 with black camo seem to be better equipped for trainning sorties, thats all I think. All right those 05 & 10 have even more extras on them, like the APU in the tail sting…:) Front and side curtains have been fully installed, even if some parts were installed earlier like curtain hinges and the rod holder with swivel mechanism at the top of the instrument panel shield.
I guess the lately added “goldish” ball grip handle in the middle of the instrument panel gives both pilots the reach to raise and lower the front curtain. What do you think?
martinezIs there a jammer in there, or just some sort of rear looking radar?
The white dielectric cap at the end of the tail sting should house the antenna of the L-175 Khibiny jammer.
martinezIf you look closely, the two ‘Black’ (or Brown?) Su-34’s (Borts 05 & 10) – they have more substantial curtains than seen on the ‘standard’ camo examples.
05 & 10 have curtains at the bottom of the side windows – and at the top.
There appears also to be a flat curved panel lying on the top of the instrument panel – with white plastic ‘stuff’ underneath it.
I wonder if 05 & 10 are the first of a dedicated nuclear strike variant ???
Ken
see pics below, so what could be that thing lying on the instrument panel?
Wouldn’t it be easier and more realistic, training wise, if they flew at night time?
Wouldn`t it be easier training wise to drill instrument flight skills 24/7?
martinezNot neon green. Just a very very light baby blue.
It is like they took the Mighty Duck scheme, but made it lighter all around. Ugh.
http://russianplanes.net/ID70840
Looks like a Turkmen Su-25 got the same treatment, baby blue bottom, horribly mixing with camo top. Praying this doesn’t become the standard.
doesnt look as bad if you dont boost photo colors sky high….;)
http://elhangardetj.blogspot.com/2008/09/turkmenistan-y-otras-cosas.html
probably they`re painted in Georgia`s TBILAVIAMSHENI aircraft plant.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?45675-Su-25-Scorpion-made-in-Georgia
martinezWhat about their struggling Mig-29 fleet? Their lifetime ended in 2010-11 and all needed overhaul and life extension. Most of them once served in 787 iap, Finow (Eberswalde), Soviet 16th Air Army in East Germany.
martinezMy question is – what are they for????
They can’t be for training blind-flying on instruments ???
Are they anti-flash curtains – is the Su-34 configured for the nuclear strike role ??
Surely they aren’t just to save the crews blushes when using the toilet ??? :diablo:
Any ideas anyone ??
Ken
If you fly IFR, you put curtains on your windows, a training sortie, for sure. Why do you have doubts?
martinezI know it’s going to be another huge image , but this HAS to be seen in all it’s splendor…:eek:
they can write down another flight hour in both a/c logbooks(No.51 & No. 52) without any hesitation…:D
martinezInteresting – so they didn’t go straight to #05 afterall!
there are still 900 numbers left to 904, no reason for being superstitious…:D
martinezSr-71 vs SA-5 Gammon
http://veteranpvo.narod.ru/s200_sr71_061110/index_sr71_141110.html
there is also a nice soviet SAM simulator webpage, created and contributed by former SAM site operators, where you can shot down your own SR-71.:D
http://sites.google.com/site/samsimulator1972/home
martinezThe Blackbird was said to be painted black not bcs the sky being black in the stratosphere but bcs of the black paint ability to radiate (leave) the heat from aircraft surface. For severe aerodynamics heating the SR-71 structure was protected with various thermal protective measures, like the heat sink structure fitted with insulation materials, ablative and heat emissive paints.
Non of the RAM structures and paints used later on US stealth aircrafts like the F117, B2, F-22 ..etc can withstand those high temperatures and would start to melt.
As for the hyped RCS reduction measures claims which didn’t make sense at all, the Blackbird was the easiest target to acquire and track even with old soviet SAM fire control radars, relying only on the speed sufficient to outrun surface-to-air missiles, ecm and tactics not to cross WP countries borders. Even if the later SA-2 variants used during 80ies were able to hit targets flying M3.5 up to 30km altitude, only the SA-5 Gammon posed a serious threat for the Blackbird.
martinezThey haven’t changed enough to make it competitive aerodynamically and hence it isn’t worth the cost of moving the production line to Russia from Tashkent. That money could have been spent on modifying the Il-96 instead, which would have given them a better AWACS/tanker anyway and the An-70 will do nicely in the transport role.
they will have the production line up and running in Ulyanovsk(Russia) and not in Uzbekistan, nor Ukraine, I think that just this fact what is worth the costs during these tough economic times. 🙂 It takes years to train aviation specialists and when the aviation industry stagnates, people are leaving, the production plant suffers by it even more.
Apart from the avionics and cockpit, none of it is actually new – you can get practically the same performance by upgrading a second-hand Il-76MD with PS-90A engines, as the Russian air force is doing anyway. BTW, this is a great upgrade as it is so cheap, it is extremely good value for money, unlike the new-built Il-476! Why, it offers very little that Ilyushin hasn’t already achieved years ago with the Il-96 and the Il-76MD-90 upgrade? It just cost them money that they can’t really spare, IMHO it’s a step back!
hmm, the Il-76 is the work horse widespread around the globe, as a strategic airlifter and commercial freighter with aft loading cargo door and ramp with high mounted wings something the airliner Il-96 will never have. Not sure how many Il-96T quick conversions with side doors exist, but the lack of aft loading cargo remains its major limiting factor for most airforces. Not sure what is the status of the Il-76 fleet regarding its 30 year service life, but it seems that effort is spent to revive the production line bcs the Il-76 is still requested. The Il-76MD-90 was the upgrade, first prototype, now the first production example is ready to fly.
Probably because they weren’t supposed to get primered due to the leading-edge anti-icing system (not sure if it’s electric or bleed air, if the latter you’d likely also want to protect the bleed air holes as long as it’s still being worked on).
yes, I was thinking the same.;)
Still, why spend more money than necessary, especially if it gives you an inferior product? Just use the Il-96 for AEW/refuelling and the An-70 for transport and be done with it 🙂
why give up the markets ones dominated by Ilyushin. Russians are a deeply nationalist people, they will still produce the Il-476 at a rate even if they will receive some An-70 for military, after all it is comming from Ukraine and not from Russia.
martinezDoes the Il-476 have an all-composite wing? Nope, so what’s your point? It doesn’t even have supercritical airfoils for god’s sake, it’s just the original, antiquated metal wing manufactured with modern tools out of fewer, integrally machined parts. In fact this may well be just as much a cost saving exercise as it is a strengthening measure, because it reduces manual labour in assembly and allows modern machine tools to be used for manufacture of the individual parts. You have to wonder where 2 years’ worth of delays comes from in that!
As for the cockpit of the 737-700, you might find a look at some airliners.net photos instructive.
.
Perhaps the benefits of supercritical airfoil was outweighted by extra costs and time for design, test and production of the new airfoil. You have to realize that the financing in Russia aviation industry is still not so fluent as in the US, so they were trying to fix the most burning problems, like new engines with less fuel consumption, avionics, glass cockpit, range, payload. At least they modified the old wing structure, making it lighter by 2,7tons, stronger for more fuel to be taken and easier to assembly. For struggling Ilyushin still a leap forward, do not you think?
http://military.tomsk.ru/blog/topic-632.html
an easy control question for all, why are those tail leading edges covered with blue tape, anyone? 🙂
http://imageshack.us/f/6/attachmentut.jpg/
martinezWell, martinez, the main reason why I also posted the second page of the article is because it both completes the list of all MiG-23s which have served in the Czechoslovak air force, but also it gives a figure on the number of hours flown “nalet” by each aircraft. It would appear that each MiG-23 flew an average of around 90 hours a year during the cold war and that most of the aircraft had flown over 1000 hours at least. Total flying time of the MiG-23 type in Czechoslovak service would be around 80,000 hours – but feel free to provide a more accurate figure!:)
That would give an aircraft loss of 1 for every 10,000 hours or so?:confused: It’s certainly a lot better than the Indian AF record, who have lost dozens of MiG-23s and MiG-27s in the last 30 years.
I was never much interested in this statistics stuff, bcs there is a saying about three levels of lie differentiations. The first is a lie, the second is an outright lie and then there is the statistics. Hopefully, I translated correctly:D
As you probably heard before, after Czechoslovakia split in 1993, Czechs kept all Floggers also due to a fact that they wanted to make trades with them to the middle east. Well, war conflicts in 90ies, sanctions, embargos burried theses plans with only one outcome for them to immediatelly ground a half of the Mig-23 fleet in 1994, bcs flying all of them was uneconomical. Last delivered Mig-23ML were flown till reaching the end of its calendar service life. Pilots had flown 50 or less per years, growing number of mishaps, incidents and maintenance problems as the date of aircraft retirement was closer. Not a good time for making summarizations and statistics of the aircraft “glorious” service life, do not you think? Anyway, half of that table describing Czechoslovak Mig-23 above is not showing flight hour values and I dont have better ones at hand right now. Do you have similar info about east German Mig-23fleet?
P.S. statistics from time frame 1971-1980, Czechoslovak Airforce, a table showing regiment flight hours per one:
NH/1K…. fatal accident
NH/1KL….fatal accident due to pilot error
NH/1H…..non fatal accident
NH/1HL….non fatal accident due to pilot error
NH/1P…..incident, damaged a/c
NH/1PL…..incident, damaged a/c due to pilot error
Regiments
4.slp……….Mig-21F,MA,MF
5.slp……….Mig-21F,MA,MF
9.slp……….Mig-21F,PF,PFM,MA,MF
6.sbolp …Mig-21MF,UM
20.sbolp….Su-7BM,BKL,U, L-29,R,
28.sbolp….Su-7BM,BKL,Mig-23BN
30.sbolp….Mig-15,SB,SBbis
word “bez” means “without”
martinezI surely thought the subject of “Poorly maintained aircraft” in the Red Eagles was an issue that had been settled. Obviously, I’m incorrect. I guess the years I spent helping to put the unit together from Day One and maintaining the acft was all a dream. Sure did seem real tho.
Hi Donno,
Since you`ve visited the forum, could you please do me a favour and fill up some parts missing about how did you handle maintenance issues experiencing during the Constant Peg program? Especially, I`d like to know how did you run heavy maintenance and repairs on the type Mig-23 aircraft, meaning also the scheduled maintenance after accumulating prescribed flight hours on the airframe and systems. I wondered whether you were executing it according to book in the first place. Did you have to read through all those technical manuals, job cards and maintenance events, operating instructions for every aggregate installed on the aircraft and the ground testing equipment delivered for the engine, fuel, flight control/autopilot system, radio and avionics, weapon systems?
Could you please describe how your maintenance depot worked on faulty aggregates and parts, meaning overhauling, reverse engineering and testing prior to installing back on the aircraft. Frankly speaking, when using replacements all the correct safety precautions had to be taken into consideration. To what measures your maintenance depot had been driven the most on the Mig-23, what parts you were struggling with mostly when doing overhaul and refurbish due to wornout, damage for example parts in engine itself, other aircraft systems when realizing that different material standards were used on Soviet aircrafts? How many testing stands, ground equipment and tooling and spare programs were needed to develop and manufacture in order to proper maintain this foreign aircraft.
Many thanks for your answer.
martinezYep, I`ve made my mistake asking you what do you think about it in the first place, but what the heck you asked for it. Unbelievable, you and your talent twisting words upside down are definitely not worth this place, you should be able to get hired somewhere else. Sheer lunacy on display for all to see. Best wishes, no more replying to you.:eek:
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