Banshee, about the Ethiopian Hip roundel – could it be that it belongs to the police/border guards/some paramilitary organization/natural parks and wildlife administrtion/etc…? maybe a search in that direction could shed some light on the unseen before roundel.
Anyway, to be constructive and draw attention away from the fake/not fake photo dispute, here are my finds for today:
Another Cameroon Alpha Jet in flight
A pair of wonderful Tunisian F-5Fs, probably from the same photo session as that with the French Mirage F1s over the Med posted on the previous page
And the Tunisian AF F-5E Y-92507 already posted 2 pages back, but this time from a slightly different angle
OK, you post a dubios picture (lighting is all wrong, there are no shadows on the MiG – especially under it, the paint has the same brightness all over it). Turns out it was posted on another forum by someone who has ONE post over there – hence 0 credibility.
Yet, when somebody tells you it’s fake, you feel the need to uselessly bash him. And that Foxbat Flex posted is very real. The yellow thing on the tail is an insignia, not a roundel, and it’s also genuine:
To get back on your picture – 2 more mistakes in it
-the light on the main wheel door is crudely overpainted with white – that’s why it looks bigger than normal. It was overpainted because the base picture was that of a real UB with the lights on
-the way the black paint (glare shield) on the nose combines with the paper/tarp which covers the nose – at a 90 deg. angle. Remember, the black thing is only paint on the airframe, so why take the care to follow its contour when all the rest of the coverings margins are irregular – as they should be in carse tarpauline was used?
though whatever thethe pod on the mirage f.1, its WAY bigger than an atlis pod!!
Maybe it looks bigger because it has the protective plastic cover?
Atlis should be 2.54 meters long and 31 cm diameter
Kh-29L should be 3.8 meters long and 38 cm diameter
TAZZ
Iraki where supposed too to have fitted their SA-2 Guideline with an infrared seeker…
No, those are SA-6 fitted with what looks like the AA-8 seeker. I’ve also seen SA-3s with SA-2 bosters, but no SA-2s modified
with IR seeker
Romanian MiG-23s
The Romanian Air Force operated a total of 46 Floggers (36 MF and 10 UB) from 1979 to 2001.
The first two MiG-23UBs arrived at Mihail Kogalniceanu AB/57th Fighter Regiment on 23 January 1979, first flights with Romanian crews being made one month later. 12 MiG-23MFs arrived on May 19.
The 93rd Regiment based at Timisoara (Giarmata AB) received soon after the same number of planes, later the number of airframes increased in both regiments.
Original deliveries (36 MF and 8 UB) ended in September 1985, when UB #137was delivered.
Overhaul was conducted at the TEREM facility in Plovdiv, Bulgaria – Aerostar Bacau didn’t assimilate depot-level maintenance for the MiG-23.
Two attrition replacements (UBs) were purchased from Russia in December 1996.
A total of 8 airframes were lost in accidents, with only one fatality.
In August 1998, the 57th Fighter Group ceased operations with the 23, all remaining airworthy planes being flown at Giarmata AB.
The last flight was made in September 2001 at Giarmata AB – most planes were inoperational since 2000, only MF #203,205 and UB #135 being kept flyable for the ROIAS 2001 airshow.
The weapons used (besides the usual unguided stuff) were:
*R-23R/T
*R-13M, later complemented by the R-60 (both on single and double launchers). I wrote complemented, not replaced because even today some of the stored Floggers still “wear” the R-13M launcher rails
*Kh-23 (AS-7 Kerry B), initially equipping only the 57th Reg, intended for use in anti-shipping role.
At delivery, they were painted in light grey overall, with red bort numbers and grey radomes/dielectric panels. The roundel was the Warsaw Pact one (red star with yellow circle and blue dot inside)
Some of the (initially grey) planes belonging to Giarmata AB received basically 2 different camo schemes in the late 80’s, with bort numbers mostly red, but sometimes only outlined in white:
-one shade of brown, one green
-two shades of green, two shades of brown
The most popular and widespread camo was the “tiger”, applied in Romania to most of the (grey) ones from the 57th Regiment at Mihail Kogalniceanu. First planes to receive it were 3 or 4 in 1984, prior to the 23 August fly-by (national day at the time). They also received the present day roundel and white radomes. The rest of the fleet got the new roundel in the 1985-86 timeframe. Most Floggers overhauled in Bulgaria received camo (tiger camo for those in the 57th Reg., green/brown ones for those in the 93rd Reg.) but in both units some were left in the original grey.
The 2 attrition examples (UB #311,512) that came from Russia in Dec.
1996 had a different camo:
For more pictures see here:
http://cartula.net/modules/ipboard/index.php?showtopic=1796
and
http://www.skybird-ev.de/tour/romania/fe03—d.htm
There is also a very informative article “Whatever happened…to
Romania’s Floggers?” written by eng. Danut Vlad in AFM July 2004, if I remember correctly.
If you can’t get a hold of it, drop me a PM with your mail adress and
I’ll send you a scan.
After that beautiful Qatari M2000 found by Flex, finally a decent pic of the Egyptian bird…
and a Mauritanian transport
A nice 4-ship over the Med including French Mirage 2000 and F1 as well as Tunisian F-5E and F
A nice Armenian Yak-18 (I think they only have one of this type)
Finally a rather worn-out Zimbabwean Hawk
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