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In all previous posts I’ve never been too close to the ’shadowy’ areas of politics. But reading an article in the recent ‘Canadian Aviator’ made me think: “Hey, it’s gonna be fun, lets talk about it!’

An author, Robert S. Grant, had one in the ‘Tales from the Lakeview’ section of the magazine. It was on the Antonov-2, a venerable ‘bush-biplane’ created in the Soviet Union in the late 40s.

As an introduction to the ‘nice talk of politics’ I’m going to show you a few images of the ‘Little Annie‘ - that’s how guys in the magazine interpreted from Russian a wide known nickname for the plane - ‘Аннушка‘.

I’ve got not too many images, in fact.. It is not so that they ‘ain’t available any more’, - lots of Antonovs still fly literally all over the globe, - but my career path sort of ‘by-passed area of the An-2 experience’ from the very beginning, and I had not often been in touch with the plane, huh… having a handy camera at the moment.

This is another one of those rare moments. We had a few An-2s in the Aqtobe Civil Aviation Flight College, - not to practice flying skills on them, though. Moreover, if you got on this plane for ‘purpose’ - you was guarantied only the take-off - and only ‘balked’ in the cabin with the rest of the ‘cadet load’. As for landing, - it was then totally up to you. Oh, yes, you got it - we used those planes for parachute jumping. As we never practiced ‘chute jumping’ in winters, planes were at idle, - and we were guarding them!

The following three pictures are courtesy of a guy who may surely qualify for ‘bush-pilot’, in Canadian sense. He lives in Northern part of Russia, (of course - in Siberia!) and is very familiar with specific of this type of operation.

And off we go!

In 2005 I spotted An-2 on Cuba

An-2 is well known in Western countries too. But Willi, a friend of mine from the US experienced an ‘ unabridged and fully authentic day of crop-dusting operation on An-2‘ in Krasnodar, Russia. I had already mentioned this ‘case’ in one of the previous posts.

And HERE IS A LINK TO AN IMAGE OF AN-2 ON FLOATS!

OK, seems like we’ve done with preamble, and let’s switch to a ’serious matter of politics’. (However, I would recommend you to read the article before

(to be continued…)