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willedoo

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Posts posted by willedoo

  1. Ground crew and armourers refill ammunition belts with .303 bullets.Aircraft in the background are Hawker Hurricane Mark 1s of No. 85 Squadron RAF at Lille-Seclin.

     

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    Phil, on a very similar subject, this is one of my favourite photos. Soviet armourers loading cannon shells into a Soviet lend lease Hawker Hurricane.

     

    Not sure what calibre, 20mm maybe.

     

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  2. The two pilots have been awarded Russia's top gong, the title of Hero of Russia, and the other crew awarded the Order of Courage.

     

    They haven't landed on a direct straight line from the airfield; that would have landed them four paddocks closer to the white building in the middle of the cornfields.

     

    Possibly they might have veered left to make sure they stayed in the corn and not hit the two lane road in front of them.

     

     

  3. Do you reckon the gear up landing was intentional, or just a matter of not enough time to get it down?

     

    Marty, I'd say no time. I've found the spot it landed on Google Earth and it's not much more than 3klm from the end of the runway. On the Baza site, there's two lots of in-cabin footage, one of the lift off and birdstrike, the other of the landing in the cornfield. I'd say there's very little missing footage between those clips. A lot of luck with timing and terrain. If they were in the air another ten seconds it could have got a bit messy.

     

    I put a red dot on the satellite screen grab where it landed. That line with some trees that the plane crossed is actually quite a substantial irrigation channel full of water.

     

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  4. ha ha ha ha.. I had a Russian born girlfirend when I was 16 (I obviously haven't drunk enough - I can remember that far back).. And I am sure that is how her family pronounced my rather poor rendition - it was how I pronounced it...and her family (all from St. P'burgh) obviously were very polite...

    Mind you, when I tried my Russian in the Czech Republic, I was met with a stony, deafining silence coupled with stern looks..

     

    For correcting me.. Spas yeee bah!

     

    ;-)

    Certainly a lot of different pronunciations. Moscow & Saint Petersburg a bit different from those out in the boonies. Same as with English, I guess. I remember going to Scotland once and thinking I should have brought an interpreter with me. The bus conductor was yelling out "Pert". Took a while to twig that we were coming into Perth.

     

     

  5. Sukhoi has started on the contract to supply production Su-57 aircraft to the Russian Air Force. The first aircraft will be handed over before the end of 2019. The contract is for 76 aircraft with the aim to rearm three air regiments.

     

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  6. ... which is only one part of the equation. The other two parts are to be able to fight the platform and sustain it. This is one reason the Russians don't have combat deployed aircraft carriers. At least one got sold/given to the Chinese. Aircraft carriers are quite hard to fight well and the Russians just gave up on it

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The Varyag is a story all on it's own. The Russians didn't sell it because it was in the too hard basket. They couldn't sell it because it didn't belong to them. The Admiral Kuznetsov (the current oil burning Russian rust bucket) was commissioned before the Soviet Union broke up, but the Varyag was still under construction in Ukraine when the Union went belly up and they ran out of money to complete it. It became the property of Ukraine after the dissolution and they didn't have the money to even maintain the part built ship so after about ten years they sold it.

     

    I think it was a Dutch tug with a Philippine crew that had the contract to tow it to China. Turkey wouldn't allow it through the Bosphoros for safety reasons, it couldn't go back up the river in Ukraine, and there was nowhere to moor it in Sevastopol. So the tug towed it around and around the Black Sea for six months until the Turks finally let them through. The tow line broke off Greece and it nearly ran aground on an island before they got hold of it again. Then when they got to the Suez Canal, the authorities wouldn't let them through because it was not under it's own power. It had to be towed via Gibraltar and around the Atlantic to China in the end. The Chinese didn't do their homework very well.

     

     

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  7. Could be, Nev. Had another look at it on full screen a couple of times. You can see the drogue come out followed by the brake chute and a dark looking piece at the ends of the shrouds. All too quick for a manual jettison; maybe they have AOA sensors that automatically release it if it deploys outside normal landing parameters. The whole thing seems to pop out before the chutes get any air at all.

     

    It happened last Saturday; I think it was part of the Aviadarts competition.

     

     

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