A recent dialog with a guy from England prompted me to look in to my archive (not really large one, don’t you think it is a ‘coffer of treasure 
), and retrieve from there a few old photographs dated early 80s, when I attended and graduated a flight college in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan.
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 »
*HERE is a report from a previous visit to Springbank
Got a chance to see Butch and Yak today.
However, there’s another practical reason for a trip to Springbank - my medical was due, so I elected to go to the Doctor Adams’ clinic at Springbank.
Of course, it was a joke, but who knows.. Should check statistics.
Thanks to Alan Negrin (a remark about Glasair Aviation as ‘being a second largest aircraft manufacturer in the state of Washington’ was his ) we had a chance to tour the factory.
Splendid. Another ‘great accomplishment was tucked under the belt’ today after we payed a visit to Everett, WA, where the wide body Boeing planes are being produced on the huge factory adjacent to the aerodrome called ‘Paine Field’.
Hello, everybody,
It is a notice to all ‘RA-85123 Fan Club’ members that we’ve got a new fellow into our enthusiastic group.
Let me introduce ‘Tom the Dutchman’ to you
I know Tom, we’ve been in touch for a pretty long while, talking on a number of aviation topics, - TU-154 aircraft included. In fact, Tom even dared to consider an idea of going over to Russia, and looking for a flying job there!
(Click HERE, if you wanna see the ‘beginning of the series’)
Like those trips to Springbank..
There are some reasons for that. It is an enjoyable ride, first of all. Going West via Old Springbank Road gets you soon into the open, and you can see a lot of space on foothills, and Rockies on the horizon - my favorite look as you roll down the Hill.
In all previous posts I’ve never been too close to the ’shadowy’ areas of politics. But reading an article in the recent ‘Canadian Aviator’ made me think: “Hey, it’s gonna be fun, lets talk about it!’
An author, Robert S. Grant, had one in the ‘Tales from the Lakeview’ section of the magazine. It was on the Antonov-2, a venerable ‘bush-biplane’ created in the Soviet Union in the late 40s.
You maybe noticed, I organized a whole blog category under the same name. Because the Mr. Yakovlev’s name is a very special one. It always meant a lot for the generations of aviators in Russia (or, formerly - in the Soviet Union). They usually learned this name at the very beginning of their way ‘from the ground up’.
Oh, yes, - for myself, as a potential ‘leisure floatplane flier’, a torturous period of ‘daydreaming and seeing myself soaring over the beautiful back country’ began! But a good ‘kick on the head to awaken the lost’ for ‘reality check’ surely wouldn’t harm.
‘Just look into your logbook!’, one may scream, and this one would be right. Thousands hours of multi-engine jet time, and the only experience I had on a single-engine piston powered plane was a time when I flew the Yak-18T in the Aqtobe Civil Aviation Flight College ’some twenty and plus’ years ago.
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