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Here’s a short note on a subject of bush flying in Russia, some related terminology, and its etymology.

First of all, in Russia they hardly ever used the term itself - ‘bush flying’. I recently had a fruitful conversation with a gentleman, a researcher from Saint Petersburg (Russia) who works on the field of aviation history. He recalls an occasion when he and his colleagues, while studying some historic publications (among other things the materials covered a topic of early bush flying in North America), have faced with the need to interpret into Russian an array of terms related to a notion of ‘bush flying’ (‘bush pilots’, ‘bush flying’, ‘bush’, etc..) He says they had even launched a dedicated discussion on one of the aviation forums, and eventually come up with a more or less adequate version in Russian. Read the rest of this entry »

Among a few interesting  things, noteworthy to mention about ‘Russky Dom’, a Russia’s ‘mission house’ in Vancouver (which was in essence the country’s ‘flag post’ heralding the next Winter Olympics in Sochi), there were the impromptu concerts and performances given by a number of folk dancers and musicians. For example, we had an exquisite pleasure to watch a delightful performance by Dmitry Kalinin’, a well know Russian ‘balalaika master’.

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Here’s a map of Arctic. The one in which you could literally see ‘both sides of it’, as if you ’soar over the top of world’. I’ve got this picture by scanning a page in an old Soviet atlas, published in 1985. By the way, this year bears some significance in respect (how it would turn out later) - to the fates of the world’: ‘Perestroika’ was officially ’spinned-off” then, and in the following years this same world has changed unprecedentedly. Read the rest of this entry »

Another photograph from the ‘Valentin’s depository, ‘AVLUGA file’. It shows a ’sim bay’ at our college in Aktybinsk. These flight training devices had neither ‘motion capability’, nor any kind of visual system to simulate the effects of flight, and the elements of environment, but they did fairly good job when we used them during an introductory training course. Read the rest of this entry »

Valentin, a friend of mine, an ex-helicoter pilot from Siberia, and a former flight college mate, has just granted an access to his photo-archive. I almost have no words to express how much I appreciate such a deed on his part, and - how excited I am.. He has accomplished an effort of epic proportion, having scanned old negatives. And then he, driven by his good faith, uploaded them on the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

Just got a permission from an author of this picture to post it here. What a beauty! Such a nice visual compliment to a topic risen in the previous post. A shot of this departing An-2 was taken in Nar’yan-Mar, Arctic Russia. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know that today is the ‘National Aviation Day’? As a matter of fact, it is exactly today, on February 23, 2009, all the country’s aviation community (and all to whom it matters in the entire world, for that sake), commemorate the 100th Anniversary since the first ever ‘manned, heavier-than-air, motor-powered flight‘ in Canada. On this day, exactly one hundred years ago, a motorized craft called ‘The Silver Dart’ made history as it lifted off from the frozen surface of the Bras d’Or Lake in Cape Breton Island, and flew successfully 800 meters, at an altitude of 9 meters. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the motives that inspired me to begin posting a series covering the topic of “Bush Flying in Russia” was simply the fact that I’m being often asked “whether there’s any kind of ‘bush flying‘ existing nowadays in Russia”. Although in almost any instances I positively affirm the mere ‘fact of existence’, - strictly speaking, and, depending on definitions that would be fixed upon some ‘essential elements of subject matter’ -  the answer could be ‘Yes’, and/or ‘No’ Read the rest of this entry »

Just look at that, - it is a moment of real day-to-day life, an episode of very authentic ‘bush operation’ in Siberia! A guy, who posted this image on a Russian aviation forum called ‘aviaforum.ru’,  said the crew of technicians are changing the landing gear on this An-2. Read the rest of this entry »