Hello, my fellow ‘RA-85123 Fan Club’ members,
Before we open this ‘Tu154 Tech Class’ let me report on what’s going on in and around the Club.
First of first, we expect a few more persons to join our club soon. They will be introduced to you as soon as they appear here. I’ve already had a preliminary talk with some of them.
There were no hurricanes visible in the West Coast of Mexico as we plowed at 40 thousand feet across the country towards our destination San Jose del Cabo on the Southern tip of Baja California peninsula, and then back heading to Toronto.
But it was apparent the energy accumulated in atmosphere wanted to be released somehow, so once in a while we needed a bit of maneuvering around ‘air mass thunderstorms’, - the bug puffy clouds scattered ‘here and there’ across large swathes of land surface.
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.
‘Hey! Look at that!’, I exclaimed in a surprise when we noticed this aircraft at Oshkosh Seaplane Base. A few days ago we saw it having just come from Yellowknife, NWT, to Red Lake, Ontario.
You maybe noticed, I organized a whole blog category under the same name. Because the Mr. Yakovlev’s name is a very special one. It always meant a lot for the generations of aviators in Russia (or, formerly - in the Soviet Union). They usually learned this name at the very beginning of their way ‘from the ground up’.
Yes, indeed, ‘wingwalking’ is an old stunt that goes back to the ‘era of ‘barnstorming’, - a period of post-WWI time when a ’surplus’ of retired from the war aviators appeared across the country, and being unable to find a more practical use for their skills and aeroplanes, they tried to make a buck performing for public with a variety of air stunts. Read the rest of this entry »
We saw Beech-18 on floats in four places during our trip to Red Lake-Oshkosh.
Of course, an encounter with the first one was very exciting. We met it in Red Lake, and it belonged to Chimo Air, a local charter company. I took a nice opportunity to walk ‘half-around’ this antique bird, C-FHZA, - sure, that’s the way - you can only do half around it, - unless you have a boat, or just jump into the water to finish full ‘half-walk-half-swim around’ the docked floatplane 
This trip across two countries was also a revelation of how many ‘antique planes on floats’ are still in commercial service doing charters across Ontario and Minnesota hauling loads of fishermen and their gear to the remote lodges across the vast ‘Water World’ in the Lake of the Woods area. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, yes, - for myself, as a potential ‘leisure floatplane flier’, a torturous period of ‘daydreaming and seeing myself soaring over the beautiful back country’ began! But a good ‘kick on the head to awaken the lost’ for ‘reality check’ surely wouldn’t harm.
‘Just look into your logbook!’, one may scream, and this one would be right. Thousands hours of multi-engine jet time, and the only experience I had on a single-engine piston powered plane was a time when I flew the Yak-18T in the Aqtobe Civil Aviation Flight College ’some twenty and plus’ years ago.
Vacation is over. Back to work.
Back into the sky. Didn’t notice much change here. All the same, exciting and boring, spectacular and dull, friendly and dangerous, bright and dark, - it is still all the same. And hopefully, will be.. For the next eh, … 100000…. years
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