Clashmaker.com

Good stuff!  Andrei, a friend of mine, responded. Again, we never met in person, and our acquaintance happened on the Internet. And I’m not going to do a comment on how those ‘myspace-style wonders’ work.. It’s been already written and said a lot on their account as they are more and more becoming ubiquotious things, I guess. 

Anyway, it is a way to communicate that has been unheard before.  And I can’t help but think of it as a ‘virtual continuum where the travel on the ‘Time Machine’ may take place’..

So, a group of ‘Polarnye Letchiki‘ on the picture are looking at you from the 80s. Location: the Soviet Union. Andrei is on this picture too. Ilyshin-14, their main ‘tool of trade’, is on the background. It is the real stuff, not an item on the museum exposition yet. Maybe, the engines were still warm at the time of taking the picture, who knows..

Oh, well, Andrei might know. We’ll ask him. For the ride in the ‘Time Machine”

As for this picture, he says it was taken in flight over the Antarctica, when he participated in the Soviet Antarctic Exploration ‘Expedition’ in 1989-90. Left seat is occupied by Michail Voronin, a navigator. Andrei says: “..seating on the left seat during cruise was more convenient for the navigator to perform ‘duties of steering the plane’..”. Oh, I’m excited to learn a bit about ‘navigation methods’ they used while flying over the Earth’s Southern cap..

Nowadays people are posting some amazing stuff on the Internet. I’ve just communicated with a gentleman who’s father was going to the Antarctica on those famous Soviet ‘Exploration Expeditions’, and he says he’s got quite a few pictures in his archive taken by his father at that time.

Here’s a couple of thumbnails

See, they ferried aircraft (Ilyushin-14 included!) on board of large ship, like ‘Ob’ the diezel-electrokhod’ in this case. The picture was taken ca. 1970-71. There’s a big river Ob in Siberia, after which this boat was named. ‘Diezel-electrokhod’ is a term for a class of large sea-going vessels driven by the electric motors whereas electricity is generated by huge diezel engines.

Cool stuff..