Happy Birthday, Shurik!

Flickr, Editorial, Family, Freedom of Choice, People No Comments »

My Best Chum My best chum Sasha (’Shurik’) from our years at the Aktyubinsk Flight College has just turned 50. ‘Big Date’ caught him yesterday. Doesn’t look 50 on this pic though! Oh, in my opinion, he still looks on 25 at his 50 :) Haven’t seen him since the time of our graduation in 1983. Read the rest of this entry »

Siberia. Bush. Oil. Helicopters

De-mythology, Freedom of Choice, Times&Spaces, Clash, People No Comments »

Mil-26 over the Siberian tundra If they asked me to find a proper image to convey the most essential  idea of the ‘Bush Flying - Siberian Style“, I would undoubtedly choose this picture (by Misha). Because ‘a flying helicopter’ is a very common sight everywhere in Siberia, - “the bigger machine, the better”. They do everything, and it looks as if they’ve been there forever. Siberia - it is the ‘Mil-country’.

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Models

Editorial, People No Comments »

Hola, folks,

WestJet 737-700 model Just talked to a friend of mine on the Skype. No, he’s not from Mexico, neither from Spain (what you might think seeing that ‘Hola’-greeting). He lives in Moscow. Among his interests - aviation photography. His pictures were published on many photo-sites, the airlines.net included.

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Yak-1 in Calgary-III. Engine Start.

Getting Wings, Yakovlev. The name&the planes, People 4 Comments »

*HERE is a report from a previous visit to Springbank

Got a chance to see Butch and Yak today.

Polkovnik Fosterov’s happy face in the Yak’s cockpit :)

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.

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Oleg Deripaska is invited to join our ‘RA-85123 Fan Club’

Flickr, Editorial, Clash, Reading, People, RA-85123 Fan Club, Kuban&Krasnodar No Comments »

Well, it may seem to sound like a joke.

Oleg Deropaska, a Russian Oligarch, on the ‘Globe and Mail’ However, it is just ‘half-a-joke’ :)

I doubt if Oleg Deripaska reads ‘Globe and Mail’ at all.. Although, it might be that his assistants had prepared some excerpts from Canadian media reporting on an interview he gave them in Moscow a few days ago. (Oh, sure, free media in the West write all kind of stuff on ‘oligarchic capitalism in Russia’ generally, and Oleg Deripaska - particularly :)

But it is an utterly obscure probability that this post will get ‘on his radar’ any time soon. Anyway, if this thing is going to ever happen, I’d like to invite him to be an honored member of our ‘RA-85123 Fan Club‘.

And there’s something that makes me think this invitation is ‘no-nonsense’.

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Max and Lilya explore Canada

Blogroll, Editorial, Travel, Clash, People 2 Comments »

My friend Max, an Aeroflot 767 pilot, and his wife Lilya came to visit us for a few days.

explorecan2.jpg We spent the whole Monday exploring Canadian hallmarks located in Banff National park, such as Lake Louise, Peyto Lake. It seems our guests enjoyed the tour. They said ‘the look of everything they saw was very refreshing’. I bet it should be, - nothing common with Moscow ‘urban landscape’ :) Lilya strides along the Bow Lake shore. Tomorrow in Calgary downtown they are going to see the same river that starts from this lake. Rockies welcomed them with a beautiful day too. We are planning a tour in the Calary downtown for tomorrow.

Will Max want to see WestJet?.. Hmm, should ask him :)

Re: Mars and Beriev pilot meeting

Editorial, De-mythology, From the Road, Clash, People, Sea Plane Flying 2 Comments »

I guess, they are bound to have such a meeting one day. It is amazing, how smaller and smaller this world is becoming!

And now I’m going to to pass a ‘Hello’ from a Mars pilot to Beriev pilots.

Martin Mars model in Victoria museum. The only problem is all active Beriev pilots now out of their bases, posted to somewhere else (around Europe), pretty busy fighting fires, including those ones ravaging in Greece.

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A recent RA-85123 sighting

De-mythology, Freedom of Choice, Clash, People, RA-85123 Fan Club 2 Comments »

Hello, my dear ‘RA-85123 Fan Club’ members,

It is a pleasure for me to inform you that we’ve just got a new image from Russia showing our ‘idol plane’ RA-85123.

85123 was seen in Sochi lately. Courtesy of Denis, aka ‘denokan’ It was spotted at Adler, - an airport servicing the Black Sea resort of Sochi - the would-be host town for the Winter Olympics-2014, by the way. And it was a job by Denis, a sure candidate for our club. Denis flies 737 for the second largest Russian carrier S7. He too flew Tu-154 before switching to Boeing. Read the rest of this entry »

Sergei Boriak, the Su-31 Aerobatic Pilot

Editorial, De-mythology, Travels, Clash, People, Oshkosh 2 Comments »

A moment of Sergei Boriak’s performance at Oshkosh Oshkosh is a great place to watch the different kind of flight performances - it is actually a ’show of shows’ where you can see a variety of ‘excerpts’ from many theme-specialized events (like this one: ‘Dave Dacy Airshows’). Of course, there’s been a lot of aerobatic flying performed there, by an array of teams and individual sporty’s pilots.

And it was a sort of natural thing that our attention was attracted to Sergei Boriak, a world-class aerobatic pilot, - ‘born in the USSR’, as myself (he lived in my native Kazakhstan too!), - and my name-sake, to all this :)

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AN-2 Russian Bushplane. Sixty Years on Duty.

Editorial, De-mythology, Freedom of Choice, Times&Spaces, Clash, People No Comments »

So, Happy Birthday, Annie!

Annie is loking forward into Her future Venerable biplane is going to meet its 60th anniversary. As a matter of fact, on 31st of August. Interesting, if Mr. Robert S. Grant who wrote an article on ‘Annie’ in the ‘Canadian Aviator’ magazine knows about it.. Anyway, I’ll try to find a way how to remind him of this fact :)

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