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Cargo planes are quite common view on the ramp of Hamilton airport. Since quite long the place is known for being a hub for cargo operation by many companies. Two leading Canadian cargo specialists CargoJet and Kelowna Flightcraft Air Charters have long domiciled airport for their needs. Both fly 727 freighters.

I always enjoy watching those planes for a very simple reason: once I flew a Soviet-built 727’s ’sister ship’, the Tupolev-154. And it comes just naturally: you can’t help but compare

Thanks to Aleksander Markin, I’ve got an access to a pool of latest photographs from the world of modern aviation in Russia. This one from his Flickr photostream shows a scene of the Tu-154 with its engines’ cowling open, apparently, for performing some maintenance on them.

And that was also the 727’s engines that attracted my attention this time. Obviously, installed to power these 727s are the so-called ‘hush-kitted’ JT-8D engines. I’m not quite sure of what specific series they are, but from the information provided on the CargoJet web site you can conclude they are either ‘JT-8D15′, or ‘JT-8D17′.

Speaking of noise abatement measures taken to bring the older aircraft types in compliance with the current emission and noise regulations, it is interesting to look into a row of solutions offered on the market.

Most probably, all CargoJet 727s are equipped with ‘Heavyweight Stage 3 kit modification’ designed by FedEx.

As far as I know, most of the Tu-154s operated by a number of Russian airlines are compliant with the ICAO Chapter III noise standards. All those planes are of a more modern, ‘M’ modification, and their D-30KU-154 engines were modified accordingly. I’ve just checked an engine manufacturer’s (NPO ‘Saturn’) web-site, and found some related information. Now they are offering a solution that would allow to further ‘hush’ D-30KU engines so that they would be able to comply with an ‘extra 5 EPNDb margin‘ against existing Chapter III norms. As you know, the European authorities are currently pushing to legislate this extra noise margin in order to limit aging aircraft into the sky over the continent. Saturn gives a quote on the ‘5 EPNDb mod‘ - US $100.000 per engine, or $300.000 per one Tu-154.

Boeing stopped building the 727s a quarter century ago, in 1984. But as for the Tu-154, I learned recently, our ‘baby’ RA-85123 was not only lone - ‘last of  the Mohicans’ - ship from the Tu-154 family that was built and commissioned to commercial services in most recent years. Incredible, but there’s still a few hulls under construction on the floor of the Samara-based ‘AVIACOR-Aviation plant’!

With a kindly permission of author, another ‘prominent aviation photographer’ on the Russian aviation site ‘Aviaforum.ru’, I’m glad to share this photo taken by him in January, this year.

I’ll be reviewing latest developments on this field in next postings related to the ‘RA-85123 Fan Club’.

Quiet take-offs and arrivals!