If you operate an aircraft or helicopter for that long, you have the training, maintenance, and logistics support system all set up, not to mention Slovakia itself is able to repair and modernize the Mi-17 helicopters, therefore not 100% dependent from Russia. Our “mildly flown” Mi-17 fleet service life has been extended to 35 years, today it is not even necessary to replace them with new ones, this whole initiative is clearly politically driven. A wise and logical solution would be to wait until anti-russia feelings go away and in future to buy a very similar hardware to minimize costs.
Do not want to criticize the Blackhawk, surely it is a combat proven design and a great assault helicopter, but for cargo transport, paratroops, fire-fighting and search/rescue missions it is clearly inferior to workhorse Mi-8/17, not to mention it is three time more expensive.
Funny why Thailand airforce choose Mi-171 over UH-60 Blackhawk.:D
“We are buying three Mi-17 helicopters for the price of one Black Hawk. The Mi-17 can also carry more than 30 troops, while the Black Hawk could carry only 13 soldiers. These were the key factors behind the decision,” says the army.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/thai-army-chooses-russian-helicopters-318146/
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I hope to have a better understanding of issues with turbofan engines so here’s a couple of questions:

Wouldn’t that mean that even if the plane is going, say, mach 1.5, the airflow to the fan section is still not faster than mach 0.9? And if so – wouldn’t that mean the turbofan would be just as efficient as when the whole plane is going mach 0.9? So the fan section would contribute just as much thrust at mach 1.5 (airplane speed) as it would at mach 0.9?

Hopefully it is worth to mention that since 50ies soviet military engine designers Archip Lyulka, Sergej Tumansky, V. Dobrynin, …etc. were designing turbojet engines for mach 2 capable fighters and bombers like Su-7, MiG-21, Tu-22 with so called first compressor stage(s) entering supersonic flow. The 1st stage compressor blades were different in shape to the rest, supersonic airfoil with sharp LE and higher chord lenght with local airflow(relative speed) passing Mach1 making normal shocks inside creating additional compression. The reason for that was higher compression ratio at the 1st supersonic stage(s) compared to a equal number of subsonic ones meaning less axial compressor stages in total, simplier design, smaller engine and higher thrust. The R13/R25 turbojet engines have all three compressor stages so called supersonic. I think the same design was applied for later Al-21, R-29-300 turbojet engine families as well, not sure about the AL-31, RD-33 though. You can find some info giving the google “Сверхзвуковая ступень компрессора“.

for comparison:

The R25-300 engine on the Mig-21Bis, 8 stage axial flow compressor , thrust military 40,3kN and 69,6kN with AB
The J79-GE-11 engine on the F-104G, 17 stage axial flow compressor , thrust military 44kN and 70,3kN with AB

The R-13 engine compressor
http://www.leteckemotory.cz/motory/r-13/r-13f-300_kompresor.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/R-11_cutaway.JPG

The J-79 engine
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/General_Electric_J79-GE-15_in_Jeju_Aerospace_Museum_20140606-01.JPG

Correct, 2150l. This fuel tank is also used on MiG-29SMT’s (and UPG’s of course).

The larger CFT of the MiG-29SMT should be several dozen of liters of fuel smaller anyway due to GTDE-117 chimney inside. Anyone ever noticed that?:)

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centerline tank is a no-drop ferry tank, so it has little use in combat missions, but wing tanks are droppable.

The centerline fuel tank 1500l can be droped easily by hitting a switch located on the control stick. The CFT doesnt have a pyro lock mechanism jettisoning it downwards but there is an electromagnetic lock which opens and releases the tank front part down rotating around tank aft hinges and then falling backwards. I thought you know these things already.

it is considered to be a common knowledge that when a bear feels threatened it will act aggressively … :highly_amused:

‘2013’ … no. 5. prototype is flying !

they are a year behind the schedule, it is 2014 already….:D nevertheless still impressive, looking forward to see hi-res pics today. The fifth prototype seems to be painted with a “silver” top coat?

According to this article (in Russian, use google translate) Indian MiG-29 were originally for Eastern Europe clients. Is this correct?

http://lenta.ru/articles/2014/11/17/export/

no, google translate screwed you over. It just says that India received Mig-29 earlier than WP countries, nothing more.

According to an article written (Airforces Monthly 9/14) by Alexander Mladenov, training centre at Astrakhan uses MiG-29 9.12A export varians. Where did these come from? In 1992 Russia inherited over 400 MiG-29, there is no reason to resort to export variants…

The soviet VVS got early izd9.12, then mostly izd9.13 the “humpback” variant, whereas for export sales only the izd9.12 was cleared. The training centre in Astrakhan had a few export variants to train with foreign pilots, that seems to be logical and no brainer.