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Exclusively, for the RA-85123 Fan Club Members, and for the rest of you - to encourage the Club’s Membership growth - we had a chance to sneak onto the plane’s flight deck.

That’s how the RA-85123’s flight deck looks. After the first quick glance we may say that all the instrumentation, blocks of warning and annunciation lights, primary and secondary controls were unchanged, and left in their usual positions, - I can expertly tell you, for I flew both modifications, ‘B’, and ‘M’. All ‘M’s I flew were in the Aeroflot’s standard configuration. And the color! Look at that! It is a ‘generic Tupolev in-house color’, - the same color the instrument panels have been painted since the epoch of Tu-104s, and Tu-95 Bears.

However, there’s something new in the look that really attracts attention while you are inspecting the flight deck on this plane. It has got a modern FMS set for navigation. As a result, gone are now a few ancient relics of the era when the planes were flown by tri-angling and dead reckoning.

RA-85123 is equipped with the UNS-1F FMS. I talked to guys, and they say it serves them very well, however they wish it would be more integrated into the aircraft systems. But the general perception of this new and modern addition to the relatively old design is very positive. We’ll keep in touch with guys flying ‘our baby’, and looking forward to their accounts of experiences.

Yeah, the GUYS..

They are characters! We’ll talk to them, no doubt.

(to be continued…)