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- catamount39
If the MiG-21 is there most modern fighter, I'll break my ribs in laughter. 
The General Airplane Thread
- Thread starter Crash
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- Rage_Racer_VOLK
- RageRacer48
I know a creepy story, called "The Boiled Pilot" by Andrey Lomachinskiy (not sure if it's a fiction or not). I couldn't find it in English so I'll briefly translate it here.Been really interested in the MiG-25/31 recently. Anyone have any interesting stories or trivia on them?
The story is about a one-off prototype plane based on the MiG-25, made to test some units of the Buran spaceship (the Soviet Shuttle), including the automatic landing system. The plane was so expensive that they called it "Phoenix" - most duralium parts were replaced with titanium, and titanium parts were replaced with niobium. But to save some funds (it was already too expensive), only necessary parts were modified. Everything unnecessary was simply thrown away, to reduce the weight. And this affected the plane's reliability.
Instead of missiles and wing tanks, it was equipped with solid fuel rocket boosters. Rumors said that this rocket-plane hybrid could surpass the SR-71 Black Bird in both speed and ceiling. The maximum flight time was about 20-30 minutes only, but no longer was needed for the task. So the designers weren't concerned much about reliability.
Once, on a stratosphere test, an accident happened. The plane was going at 30+ km altitude and Mach 3+ speed, when the cockpit cover suddenly detached, but the ejection seat didn't go off. The pilot was wearing a stratosphere suit, but ejecting even at Mach 1.5 would result in multiple bone fractures and damage of the suit. When the speed is twice higher, the resistance of the medium is 2^2 = 4 times higher. And the sudden extreme decompression caused hypobaric shock to everything in the cockpit.
The pilot was still alive for few seconds (perhaps his suit "leaked" a little bit later), and by some miracle, he engaged the Buran's autopilot, so the plane returned to base on its own, and landed.
When the airbase crew came to the cockpit, they were shocked by what they saw.
All plastic parts of the cabin have melt. The metal tubes of oxigen supply looked like they were cut with a circular saw. The pilot's arms were chopped off by the airflow. The aluminium parts of his suit melted or simply vaporized, leaving just small oxide bits. But when the investigators put the suit off the pilot to open his body, they were shocked even more. The autopsy showed that all liquids in his body have literally boiled.
And the MiG-31 was developed to intercept cruise missiles.
They have 29's as well.If the MiG-21 is there most modern fighter, I'll break my ribs in laughter.
- 22,551
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- HamiltonMP427
If the MiG-21 is there most modern fighter, I'll break my ribs in laughter.
They run mig-29s so they're not that out of date fighter wise. The bomber side of thing though is far different, it's much much worse.
EDIT: Story above talks about the Armstrong Limit, which was known about for some time before the suggested date this happened, so I don't think I buy it. If they were surprised, that the pilot literally boiled at that high up after decompression and melting of suit.
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- 9,554
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- catamount39
What, do they use Pe-8's or something?
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- HamiltonMP427
What, do they use Pe-8's or something?
Il-28s and from what I can tell they don't look like they were ever modernized from the era they came out of. Even if they were Chinese built versions.
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- catamount39
Oh my God...
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They were surprised not by the fact of boiling (they new about Armstong Limit of course - the author mentions that this phenomenon was demonstrated on science lessons in Soviet schools), but the effects it caused to the pilot's body (I just skipped most of them in my post). Like, there was no blood left - the heart was empty, the large vessels contained foam instead of blood, because oxygen was coming out of hemoglobin and plasma boiled. And the eye pupils were white because of thermal denaturation of proteins.
No Pe-8 survived by the present time, so that can't be.What, do they use Pe-8's or something?
Regarding attackers, they have Su-25's, which are quite up to date.
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- catamount39
Ah yes the Frogfoot, like those things. 👍They were surprised not by the fact of boiling (they new about Armstong Limit of course - the author mentions that this phenomenon was demonstrated on science lessons in Soviet schools), but the effects it caused to the pilot's body (I just skipped most of them in my post). Like, there was no blood left - the heart was empty, the large vessels contained foam instead of blood, because oxygen was coming out of hemoglobin and plasma boiled. And the eye pupils were white because of thermal denaturation of proteins.
No Pe-8 survived by the present time, so that can't be.
Regarding attackers, they have Su-25's, which are quite up to date.
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- HamiltonMP427
So they were surprised to have seen the Armstrong limit held true? Also as I said I can't find any documentation of the person who wrote it and or it being written at all, it's a good story but that's about it to me.
Carlos
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That's crazy! Hope he didn't felt too much of it. About those North Korean Mig-29's. Wikipedia says 35 but I doubted they can even maintain these properly so I did a little searching and found some interesting things. Typical NK style
So yeah in total, 35 should've been correct. They took delivery of the first Mig-29 in 1988 and it lasted till 1992. They made a second deal in 1992 and the intention was to build the planes in Panghyon. It was too much to handle for NK and when they wanted to pay Russia in goods instead of money, Russia stopped transferring parts. NK had put together ~3 Mig-29's when they decided, in 1993, to abandon the project. It's said they received 14 completed planes from the first deal, so with the other three home-built ones they had a whopping 17 Mig-29's. One of them has crashed, one is at display and one of their An-24's is rocking a radar from an unfinished Mig-29. Because they were exports they were downgraded versions. No friend or foe system. It does have a jammer.. In 1999 a new deal was made for spare parts going through the early 2000's. 
First time a North Korean Mig-29 was spotted (photo ^), March 2003
One R-27R and two R-60MK's
Any Starfighter fans here? In Norway:
Carrier ops Mig-29
Dan
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One important thing to note are the Hughes 500Es. http://www.businessinsider.com/north-koreas-illegal-helicopters-emerge-2013-7?IR=T
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Dan
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Noticed something interesting tonight. Around 8:00 PM EST on FlightAware, there was a major holding pattern off the east coast of New Jersey. Perhaps I've never seen this before, and it might be KJFK's usual traffic pattern, but planes were in a very long loop traveling south. I believe they were all heading to KJFK, but I didn't think to look at their individual destinations.
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Wiki says there are 44 privately owned MiG-21s in the USA. I want one!
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- catamount39
50's jets were dope. 👍
What was that experimental delta wing fighter the USAF was testing in the late 50's? I can't remember the name of it but it was awesome. 👍
What was that experimental delta wing fighter the USAF was testing in the late 50's? I can't remember the name of it but it was awesome. 👍
Carlos
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Wiki says there are 44 privately owned MiG-21s in the USA. I want one!
Borderline suicidal?
Delta wing planes are scary! Convair XF-92?
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BobK
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The F-102 did become a production fighter; I was thinking XF-92 as well because of the "experimental".While that looks awesome, there was something that looked like a Mirage-2000 almost, and it wore the orange/white scheme I think.
Edit - Found it! The YF-102!
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- catamount39
I'm not brilliant about post Korea planes so I didn't know lol.
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The F-102 and the F-106 were in use here at Tyndall when my family moved here in 1968, and we saw them overhear regularly. Visually very similar, the -106 was more powerful, had the "coke-bottle" fuselage, slightly different air intakes, and a flat-topped tail fin rather than the point of the -102.
Missiles only, including nuclear air-to-air capability, no guns. Strictly an interceptor, not really a fighter, it was built to go after bombers.
Missiles only, including nuclear air-to-air capability, no guns. Strictly an interceptor, not really a fighter, it was built to go after bombers.
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The F-8 Crusader however, is bae for me. <3
Proper dogfighter with a 20mm canon. 👍
Proper dogfighter with a 20mm canon. 👍
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Any F-4 love? Dark green camo is my favorite.
Black is cool too.
Black is cool too.
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On a side profile, it's a bit trickier to identify; most Airbuses use the arrowhead winglets which are a giveaway, but the recent A321s have the "sharklets". Most 757s in their fleet have winglets, but some of their 1980s-spec 757s do not.
But from the front, the chiseled Airbus nose is a bit different than the rounded Boeing nose.
On the other hand, the Delta registration sequence is different:
N5xxyy and N6xxyy for 757s
N3xxDN for 321s
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