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Of course, one of the important subjects, - if you talk about operating aircraft in remote, and sparsely settled areas, i.e., in the ‘bush’, - should be a topic of the aircraft itself. As I keep writing this collective notes, which, I hope, one day will make up a core to the ‘Comparative analysis of bush operation on both sides of Arctic’, I feel a need to talk in more detail about the planes employed for this kind of job, on both - North American, and Russian side, respectively.

Well, just ’scratch the topic’s surface’, - compare a fleet composure on respective sides of the ‘game board’, - and you’ll be able almost immediately to point out one obvious difference: a significantly lower number of aircraft types that are still buzzing over bush on the Russian side.  Essentially, today they have been left with only a ‘true bush plane’, the Antonov-2.

No doubt, it is one of the greatest bush planes ever created, in the Soviet Union time it was built in tremendous numbers, and there’s a strong fleet of them still available to operators, - provided the parts supply, repair and maintenance are kept at adequate level, but it is clear, one day some newer designs would be badly needed.

A few years ago, as a measure in finding ways of extending the venerable design’s life span, boosting its capability, they came up with a turbine conversion of it, designated ‘An-3′. Seems, it turned to be a pretty good machine, but still, - they are not built as whole new aricraft, - although deeply overhauled, they are just re-engined units, provided from the same ‘old stock’. (I also wrote about some efforts made recently, and aimed at re-introducing the An-2s on floats).

Bear in mind the fact, the country’s manufacturing industry have changed tremendously since the Soviet Union collapse. (See a remark on ‘Samara General Aviation Phenomenon).

As the newly emerged players on the field better and better learn how to run businesses accordingly ‘rules of market economy’, they are trying to create some competitive product, satisfying needs of potential customers. But yet, the ‘environment of concern’ is outlined too sketchy, and it is a bit premature to call it the ‘functional general aircraft production market’.

However, a few aircraft designs ‘appeared on the radar’ in recent years deserve to be reviewed more closely. One of them is ‘SM-92′ ‘Phinist’, along with its turbine version dubbed ‘SM-92T’ ‘Turbo-Phinist’.

At the top of this post you can see a picture of the similar ‘Turbo-Phinist’. The picture was sent to me by a friend of mine who used to work for a company called ‘Chel-Avia’. This company may be also cited as another example of new type of business entities emerged in recent years in Russia’s aviation, a ‘fixed base operator’. These relatively small ‘general aviation multi-tasking’ firms are usually created around some passionate and entrepreneurial enthusiasts, capable of ‘pushing hard’ through the ambiguity and uncertainty of Russian aviation regulations and laws. I was giving a story of such aviation business turned to be a success in my post about ‘Flying in Kuban’.

I’ll try to solicit for more information with regard to their experiences of flying the SM-92T.

However, in Russia the plane is looked at as a good candidate for making it to a rank of ‘prospective bush plane’.

(to be continued..)