My best chum Sasha (’Shurik’) from our years at the Aktyubinsk Flight College has just turned 50. ‘Big Date’ caught him yesterday. Doesn’t look 50 on this pic though! Oh, in my opinion, he still looks on 25 at his 50 
Haven’t seen him since the time of our graduation in 1983. Read the rest of this entry »
Here you find a little bit more information on ‘Aurora’, - a plane, that was a subject in my post ‘Once upon a time: Cold War‘. I found a few better pictures of the plane, they were taken at the Abbotsford Airshow. A full official name of the aircrfat is ‘CP-140 Aurora‘. Read the rest of this entry »
It was my first ever sighting of so many American military aircraft flocked together at one spot. Although they looked quiet, it was obvious that they hadn’t been like that over most of the time, and their presence here were ‘on purpose’. ‘Here‘ was at Manas, the Kyrgyzstan capital’s (Bishkek) airport. Read the rest of this entry »
It is always an exceptionally enjoyable experience - flying with a former military pilot. Conversation is always a great part of it. Although I was not trained in the Soviet Air Force system, nor I ever flew for them, I’m still able to (at least) ‘keep sustainable level of chatter’ on the topic Read the rest of this entry »
You can’t see them too often at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Oh, well, in fact, these, and other of their kind fly over the Newfoundland by dozens per any given day - across Atlantic, in both directions, but these big ones never stop at YYT (’Torbey’) routinely. Read the rest of this entry »
Before the dawn of ‘helicopter era’ over the ‘bush country’ across the span of the Soviet Union (see the previous post), aviation engaged into exploration, transport, and communication in the country’s remote areas went through more or less the same lot of problems, and was learning the same kind of lessons the bush aviation in North America did. It may sound incredible, but there were far more aircraft types flown across the country than it is now. Read the rest of this entry »
If they asked me to find a proper image to convey the most essential idea of the ‘Bush Flying - Siberian Style“, I would undoubtedly choose this picture (by Misha). Because ‘a flying helicopter’ is a very common sight everywhere in Siberia, - “the bigger machine, the better”. They do everything, and it looks as if they’ve been there forever. Siberia - it is the ‘Mil-country’.
Paul, a guy from England, who I recently talked to with regard to flying Yak-42 asked a question:
A recent dialog with a guy from England prompted me to look in to my archive (not really large one, don’t you think it is a ‘coffer of treasure ), and retrieve from there a few old photographs dated early 80s, when I attended and graduated a flight college in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan.
Seems like it was a second picture in a set taken during the same “photo session” - it shows the time and the date in the lower right corner (the 13th of whatever month..), - a date registering format in the camera is set in such a way that unfortunately there’s no indication of the month and the year. But at least we’ve got the time: it is 9:32.. Read the rest of this entry »
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