I don’t think the name of this Canadian company was widely known in Russia until the middle-late 90s, when one of the company’s products made a roaring entry into the country, and ever since then it was becoming more and more popular, - for all the power, speed, and lots of fun riders had with it. And the name was ‘catchy’ too - it sounded great in Russian that can easily deal with ‘rolling R-R-Rs’ 
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(Images courtesy of ‘Ivan from Dalavia’, and his friend who’s been to Antarctica)
August 31, 1947, Novosibirsk, the USSR, - time and place of the Antonov-2’s birth. The very first one took off, and marked the beginning of a ‘pedigree line’ that has been responsible for generating of a variety of models, and they say ‘yet it is not over’!
And this gentleman, Mr. Antonov, was behind the plane’s creation.
Eric sent me a letter the other day with an attached image showing some pins. He wrote he got those pins in 1969 when he was at the Paris Airshow. And two pictures of them brothers having fun in Paris soon followed.
I could only imagine himself, - a young fellow, perhaps fascinated with aviation already, and here he is, - in the focal point of the world aviation - Paris Airshow! At that time I could only dream or read about it, - in ‘Izvestiya‘ newspaper, for example (in our family we never cared about subscription to ‘Pravda‘
Oshkosh is a great place to watch the different kind of flight performances - it is actually a ’show of shows’ where you can see a variety of ‘excerpts’ from many theme-specialized events (like this one: ‘Dave Dacy Airshows’). Of course, there’s been a lot of aerobatic flying performed there, by an array of teams and individual sporty’s pilots.
And it was a sort of natural thing that our attention was attracted to Sergei Boriak, a world-class aerobatic pilot, - ‘born in the USSR’, as myself (he lived in my native Kazakhstan too!), - and my name-sake, to all this
Sky is an environment we are being in while we are at work. Take a break and have a look inside this domain.
It is not only ABOVE us, but pretty much all AROUND, and there’s quite a bit below. As much as you can cram into 15, 20, or 41 thousand feet of space vertically.
So, Happy Birthday, Annie!
Venerable biplane is going to meet its 60th anniversary. As a matter of fact, on 31st of August. Interesting, if Mr. Robert S. Grant who wrote an article on ‘Annie’ in the ‘Canadian Aviator’ magazine knows about it.. Anyway, I’ll try to find a way how to remind him of this fact
Darn! - just unable be ‘too serious’: when I was writing previous post on the topic of ‘Boeing in Russia’ it happened to me again: at some point I ‘had given in’ and deviated from a ’serious tone’, and, instead of giving some ‘facts and figures’ to the audience of visitors that probably wanted to see them in order to find out if there’s any proof of an ‘allegedly growing Boeing’s presence in Russia’, I began to talk about planes’ names, and making fun of ‘Boeing the Pushkin’… Well, isn’t it a good proof ?
But today I recalled one recent episode, and it came to me I should share it ‘to top up’ the topic. It is about another plane bearing a really funny name
And they already have a name for the would-be joint venture between Boeing and VSMPO-AVISMA: the Ural Boeing Manufacturing (UBM).
Talking about Boeing’s presence in Russia observed in a recent history, it may be said for sure it’s been growing. It is not only about many Boeing-manufactured aircraft, that are now rather common view in Russian airports, in liveries of many Russian air carriers (however, I spotted this Aeroflot’s 767 in Toronto, just a few days ago. They’ve been with the company for many years).
Bets are that talking of all folks occupying offices in ’some’ of these downtown Chicago highrisings, there’s a group that might be found here, and there’s something special you may say about this group: they are in possession of… ‘unusually extended knowledge of a place called Verkhnyaya Salda, - that’s the name name of a town, which is way smaller than Chicago, and its location is thousands miles away, in Ural region of Russia.
(Click HERE, if you wanna see the ‘beginning of the series’)
Like those trips to Springbank..
There are some reasons for that. It is an enjoyable ride, first of all. Going West via Old Springbank Road gets you soon into the open, and you can see a lot of space on foothills, and Rockies on the horizon - my favorite look as you roll down the Hill.
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