willedoo

Thanks for the explanation; I figured as much, but as I said, do you have a link to the site or article associated with the graphic. It would be interesting to read a bit more about it.

That's just an image with squiggly lines, FT. Do you have a link to the parent article with some context.

Cheers, Willie.

Can't see the image, FT. Is it my computer or did the upload not work?

Cheers, Willie.

Watching the coverage live on Russian media is interesting. There's reports from Syrian rebels that one pilot has been killed by their ground forces, but it's unconfirmed at this stage. So far, they've had one Russian and two Australian analysts commentating. The bloke from the Central Queensland University seems to think it was brought down from the ground. The lady from Canberra seems to be very critical of Turkey, but not adding much to as how it happened.

Russian FM, Sergey Lavrov, is off to Turkey tommorrow to sort it out.

Russia has said that it's one of theirs. They're claiming it was in Syrian airspace, and was most likely brought down from a ground strike. Two locals were supposed to be injured from falling debris.

It must have been very close to the border as it has crashed in Syria.

Breaking news tonight that a Turkish F-16 has shot down an aircraft that violated it's border with Syria.

I've watched the supposed footage of the aircraft going down and it's a Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer with wings fully extended.

Russia is operating Su-24's in Syria and the Syrian Air Force has them as well, so it's not known yet which country it belongs to. Eyewitness reports say both pilots ejected.

Cheers, Willie.

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20151124/1030636232/military-plane-crash-syria-turkey.html

Russian news agency, Sputnik, formery RIA Novosti, is running this article claiming that PBS has passed off Russian strike footage as American. Someone's right and someone's wrong, I guess.

http://sputniknews.com/us/20151121/1030518092/pbs-newshour-russian-airstrikes-footage-us-lying.html

One thing Isis has done that the UN couldn't is unite Russia with the rest of the world in a common goal.

A year is a long time in politics. Last G-20, we saw Shirtfront beating his chest and a public, politician and media frenzy calling for Putin to be banned from attending. Come the 2015 G-20 and Vlad is everyone's new best friend. No wonder he doesn't lose any sleep over the dickheads.

Cheers, Willie.

From Russia with love.

Some Syrian footage - not all that exciting, but history in the making. After all these years, the strategic bombers, Tu-95, Tu-160 and Tu-22 have seen combat.

That's interesting. Does anyone have any thoughts on the aerodynamics behind the large horizontal stabilizers.

I can only think of the large dihedral shape being for roll resistance and to counteract the weight of all those engines, being mounted high and lateral. Even without the engines, is there an ever present roll instability in ground effect? I don't know much about ground effect forces.

Cheers, Willie.

It's an interesting re-manufacture. I knew they were using the Honeywell turbo prop and modern avionics, but didn't realise the wings were to undergo such a transformation. Would be all metal, I guess. If I win the lotto, I'll buy one and we can take it for a spin, Phil.

Cheers, Willie.

The new An-2MS ( TVS-2-DT)

The news item mentions modernizing the engines, but no mention of any other modifications. They quote a fair bit less fuel burn than the competitors, so maybe it will be economical. Seems to be part of the push to go back to more local industry. I think the sanctions made them realise how dependant on exports they were.

Whether or not they're hoping for an export future for the aircraft is another matter.

Thanks for that info, FT. It also carries about 10 less passengers. As said, it's roughly the same class, or more precisely, designed to perform roughly the same role. Fairly old design now, though.

Cheers, Willie.

It looks like Russia is going to resurrect the Il-114 as a short haul aircraft. Roughly the same class as the ATR-72 and Dash 8.

http://sputniknews.com/russia/20151115/1030137648/russia-civil-aviation-industry.html

Post#54 revisited. The US and its co-conspirators have been slaughtering "arab militants" for years. However it has only been very recent that any credible force (Putin's newly energised Russia) has checked this crushing onslaught. This further atrocity against innocent and helpless members of the public may be designed to justify the West's war crimes against Assad's "barrel bombing" regime by implicating Syrians in the atrocities. Perhaps we will see a link to Russia following the extraordinary moves of the past week against Russia's athletics admin. Remember an American cyclist winning the Tour (many times).

There could be a lot of potential candidates if the downing of the airliner was a terrorist act. If it was militants linked to the troubles in Syria and the reason, in theory, was payback for the Russian intervention, then it could only be IS or al-Nusra. It couldn't be any of the other foreign supported groups, as we're told that they are 'moderate' groups and 'moderates' don't do awful things like that. So if it wasn't IS or al Nusra, who else would stand to gain from it, and how would they expect the spin off to harm Russia. If a Russian airliner was brought down, it would be directed at that country and not done to scare infidels in general.

F-104 at an Italian scrapyard.

AH and AN are both correct. A is A in both Roman and Cyrillic, N is N in Roman and H in Cyrillic.So you have Antonov and Антонов.

Cheers, Willie.

Thanks for posting that story, poteroo. You should write a book about the experiences one day.

Cheers, Willie.

This video was an eye opener for me

Basically, if the puppet won't dance, you smack him. No wonder the world's in a continual state of war.

I beg to differ with dr zoos glib one liner about Putin having "decimated the economy" . Putin was dared by the coalition of the killing to go to war in the Ukraine when an elected leader was replaced by a fascist dictator, Poreshenko. He didn't but was rewarded by the West with sanctions similar to those applied to Iraq in the 90's (Madelaine Albright's comment when it was pointed out that restrictions on the import of life saving medicines and baby formula was causing countless innocents to die ," It was worth it". Look it up.) Now Putin is doing the west's declared job of killing the terrorists and well. Read something that doesn't include Murdoch in its masthead. Don

Sometimes it's what they don't tell us, as opposed to printing outright untruths. Another disturbing trend of late is to quote 'anonymous sources', 'persons familiar with the matter' or 'according to social media reports'. One recent trend is to state ' We have conclusive evidence'. When challenged to provide that evidence, the standard answer is ' We cannot release the evidence as it would compromise our national security'. What a matrix we now have.

Both sides have professional trolls and bloggers on the payroll. The theory is - throw some mud and it will stick because most people blindly believe the limited news sources that they access. I can guarantee that most people with a hardline stance against Putin have never read one of his speeches, ever. The reason our press doesn't publish them, is that they make a lot of sense. And we can't have that.

As far as decimating the economy, economics is above my head. I guess only time will tell. The Chinese have said that they will back Russia financially, and Russia still has 370 billion US curency reserves. The sanctions are hurting Europe as much as Russia, so maybe they'll pull through it.

Cheers, Willie.

Putin has had problems with neighboring Chetnya some time back, and he responded by having a war. Part of his aura and mass appeal is being strong and in control. If someone can hide a bomb and put a Russian plane out of the sky, it is a dent in his armour. Nev

Whether any country has the right to fight separatists to maintain the integrity of their borders is another question, I suppose. The American Civil War comes to mind. I think if half of one of our States tried to separate by violent means, our Prime Minister would be seen to be strong and in control by putting the rebellion down.

I guess there's two distinct camps in Chechnya; whether it's Sunni against Shia, I don't know. When the Russian intervention in Syria first started, Chechen Muslim forces tried to volunteer to fight Islamic State as ground forces, but the federal Government declined their offer.

Cheers, Willie.

This will be devastating for Egypt's economy.

I've just been reading that there's 80,000 stranded Russian tourists in Egypt at present. All flights from Russia have been halted and they're using thirteen Russian airlines to evacuate the tourists with hand luggage only. Other baggage will be screened and follow later on cargo planes.

Add that 80,000 to the thousands of British and other tourists, multiply by the average spend, and that's a lot of money. I don't think Egypt can just absorb that sort of financial loss.

Northrup Grumman has edged out Lockheed and Boeing to win the strategic stealth bomber contract.

A big saving grace for the company; there'd be a few smiles there.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/2015/10/27/northrop-grumman-wins-usaf-bomber-contract/74661394/

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2015/10/stealth-bomber-win-secures-once-uncertain-future.html