Do you know why do they paint this spiral (or, - ‘helix’?) on a spinner’s cone? I’ve heard a couple of things, and I can bet you have, too, - at least, of one of them. What? - yeah! - there’s a myth, and according to it this spiral figure is to put on the spinner to help scare birds away if they happen to be nearby the flying aircraft. Nope, nothing like that. Read the rest of this entry »
Yak-42 was a remarkable plane made in the USSR. I remember the time when it appeared on the regular service, being operated by a few regional detachments of the former - the ‘Soviet Aeroflot’. To aviation community in the West, Aeroflot was (and, probably, some think it still is.. but it is not any more) known as the ‘largest airline’ in the world. In some sense it was true. Read the rest of this entry »
A while ago I started a theme of Arctic and Antarctic exploration on this blog, and christened it ‘Antarctica: Greg’s files’. Now how my own virtual ‘polar exploration’ goes, - it seems like it has gone far beyond the material which laid originally under the grounds for this topic. Then it all began from the three photo-albums belonging to Greg, one of our pilots. Greg worked for ‘Kenn Borek’ before joining our company, and he flew the Twin Otters over both ‘caps of the World’. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
At last I loaded up a video which I took in last November during a visit to the Springbank airport. Then Butch Foster demonstrated engine start and run on their Yak-1. I remember I hardly reached a spot in the hangar where he worked, as he asked me: “Wanna hear some noise?” Read the rest of this entry »
So, next day we flew over the Abbotsford area heading East from Vancouver. Weather seemed to be improving, there were some breaks, and even large openings showing clear sky. We were climbing on top of all clouds already, and I took a short glimpse on the Airshow premises.
“Looks like they are going to be more lucky with weather today..”, was my ‘PIREP’ to a captain. Read the rest of this entry »
Neat picture! I’ve got my hand on it courtesy of a friend, who used to be a ‘polarny letchik‘, a ‘polar flyer’. In Russia they use this name (instead of generalized term ‘bush pilot’) for identifying a type of airmen involved in flying up in the Arctic, or down in the Antarctic. I never met this friend of mine in life, we had just bumped into each other on the Russian language equivalent of ‘MySpace‘. Read the rest of this entry »
Annual airshow in Abbotsford was opened yesterday. And how it turned, I’ve got a bit of ‘random luck’ having been scheduled for a flight to Abbotsford on this day. Well, I didn’t plan anything specifically with regard to air show beforehand. Didn’t even make a bid for such a feature as ‘overnight in YXX’. Read the rest of this entry »
I always wanted to tell a couple of things about this plane, and its pilot. Surely they both deserve our attention, and paying due tribute to them I regard as a debt of honor, no less. Lives of both tragically ended up together..
But before this sad accident there was a fascinating story of ‘re-birth’ in which they too were ascending together. Oleg Liakishev and Li-2, - the Man and the Plane..
Looks cool. Can’t remember if I’ve seen this kind of tires on heavy, jet transport lately. It is a nose bogey on the Iljushin-76. They fly in Siberia, all around the place, gravel (grass) strips included. A friend of mine who works there took this picture. Illustrated ‘Heavy jet bush flying , Siberian style’ 
Read the rest of this entry »
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