Aviation BS and Photo Thread

Good luck!

I'm a retired Naval Aviator, and I wouldn't trade that career with any other I could have landed upon.

 

What did you fly?

 

MiG-29UB Fulcrum at the Oshkosh Airshow in July 2023.

 

How'd they get that out of the Soviet Union?

 

I think someone flew it.

 

It did service in the Ukrainian Air Force. A US international law attorney named John Sessions purchased the aircraft, and had it shipped to the United States. He then spent years restoring it to flight condition. Paul Allen bought the MiG-29, then when he passed away, billionaire Jared Issacman purchased it, upgraded the avionics and other systems and flies it at airshows and uses it for training against Western fighters.

It's a fascinating story.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/6-million-dream-comes-true/

In addition to the MiG-29UB at Oshkosh, the MiG-23 Flogger and MiG-17 Fresco were also there. I'm not sure 3 generations of Soviet Bloc fighter jets have ever been at the same airshow on the same days on American soil. Absolutely incredible.

Randy Ball's MiG-17F Fresco



The Flogger did fly but I missed it getting breakfast at a local diner that morning. It lost its rear seat canopy mid-flight. A few weeks later it experienced compressor failure at an airshow in Michigan and crashed and exploded. It came to a stop near an apartment complex. Thankfully no one was hurt or killed. The apt building had scorch damage and several vehicles were totaled. There are several youtube videos and news article on google about it. The Flogger was owned by former Navy pilot Dan Filer. He has a warehouse in Texas with 9 more Floggers.

 

It sounds like the Flogger was built strictly to Soviet standards!

 

It is a 60 year old aircraft. Lol.

 

I owned a Cessna from that vintage. It never lost any parts in-flight. Just saying.

Btw, Soviet standards from that vintage were quite low.

 

The Cessna is just a smudge simpler with no complicated systems.

 

I’ve been on the 320 series for years and never noticed this until you mentioned it. Very cool

 

Jesus. Thats a lot of commie junk to potentially fall out of the sky in a single place at the same time.

 

Several old MiGs were parked at Stead field over the years, 15, 17, and 21 IIRC. When were were up there doing an engine swap on the Sea Fury once, the field was pretty much deserted. I fetched the articulated loader with giant fork attachment from the far end of the field and was driving back along the ramp, and looking down and messing with some of the speed and steering sensivity settings...and...managed to not accidentally skewer one of them...

 

Exactly.

 

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/mig-23-flogger-russias-worst-fighter-jet-ever-fly-208205

As one expert put it years ago in this publication:


“There is no ambiguity here: the MiG-23 boasts a long, well-documented, and deeply embarrassing service record. The full extent of its failures is too great to recount in detail, but here are a few highlights. Over a dozen Syrian MiG-23 jet fighters were shot down by Israeli F-15s and F-16s over the course of the Arab-Israeli Wars. Iraqi MiG-23 jet fighters also fared even more poorly against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, reportedly suffering upwards of fifty losses against Iranian F-14s, F-5s, and F-4s. Egyptian MiG-21 jet fighters routinely outperformed Libyan MiG-23s during the Libyan-Egyptian War, and two of these fighters were destroyed by two U.S. F-14 Tomcats during the 1989 Tobruk skirmish.”

 

Thank you for an intelligent and informative response.

 

A poorly worded question results in a very poor answer

 

Absolutely, no argument from me on any of those points. I just meant that there is a whole lot more to fail, the nose landing great probably has more moving parts than an entire Cessna 152/72.