Flashback!

[sundaymorningstaple]

Been there & done that. Wow! Talk about déjà vu. I was in a discussion earlier just before lunch with my boss' son about choppers and autorotation (landing a chopper without power). I went on Utube to show him some clips when I found the following clip. It was made about a year or two before I went through the program in '65 (They stopped using the OH-23s in Ft Wolters shortly before I arrived. By the time I got there all were using the TH-55 (Hughes). We affectionately referred to them as "Mattel Messerschmidts" because all the body panels were made of plastic.

[ecureilx]

The fundamentals are still same I guess !!





Like, for example, after a maintenance, ask the engineer to fly with you, and if he is not happy to fly with you, don't fly the thing (that's from one of my very former long employer's pilot )

[JR8]

I enjoyed watching that; I was taken aback by the scale of things, the resources. Perhaps I shouldn't have been given there was a war on.

How amazing for you to find such a '[precise] blast from the past'.

[x9200]

On the subject of vertically taking off aircrafts, MIG-29 during this year RIAT show in the UK

[JR8]

The MIG-29 is pretty amazing. I forget if I mentioned before but I saw then doing a display flight one time when I was in Egypt.

We'd been on a dive trip out of Sharm-el-sheikh up to the Tiran islands, and on the boat on the way back (by then chilling out) on our way past the airport the MIG-29s were doing their thing at a miltary trade fair. Taking off, and going vertically up, and up, until... hard to judge, maybe 5-8000M. Then in this vertical ascent, very gradually coming to stalling point. Reversing, and tumbling, quite some way down, 'out of control', throttling back up, coming out of the tumble and at maybe 1000M going from a vertical drop to a horizontal fly-by complete with sonic booms, over the runway.

And that happened several times, with us chugging along a mile or two offshore. It was one of those moments when you see military hardware up close and are really awed (perhaps in both 'good and bad' ways). My reaction was similar one time, Mid-west USA, seeing some US tanks (M1 Abrams?) doing a 'display' up close... jaw-dropping.

[nakatago]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Cobra

I first heard about it being only done on a Mig, though (needless to say, is wrong).