[Mefustae]

Came across this movie of Russian acrobatics in both civvy and military aircraft, featuring Stunt Planes, MiGs, Sukhois, the decidedly unique Russian Aircraft Carrier [I believe it's the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov], and an appearance from one of the best looking aircraft designed, the Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut (Су-47 "Беркут" - golden eagle).

Damn, those Ruskies can really fly

Edit: I swear, if someone else corrects a minor technical detail in one my post, I think i'm going to scream!

[FireCrack]

I dont see any acrobats....

[Unknown Target]

Don't you mean aerobatics?

[Fineus]

Whatever he means - those birds sure can fly. I still remember being at Farnborough Airshow around '97 I think it was... they had the Russian SU-37 there doing its "cobra" and turning on a dime maneuvers... quite incredible.

They stored those jets behind a cluster of woods on the far side of the airfield under heavy protection as nobody was supposed to see them up close... but right at the end of the show they wheeled them out for a press shoot and parked them right infront of the spectator stands. Most people had gone home by that point but my father and I must've been about 5/10 meters away from them... they looked fantastic.

Anyhow.. yeah.. very nice flying.

[vyper]

Pfft

[Flipside]

Heh, I was an Apprentice Avionics Engineer at Farnborough for a couple of years, some of the most fun I ever had They've got an old 2-seat Hawker Hunter in Q Shed there, set up as a trainer, that all the trainees got a ride in at some point, it's got to be up there with my first parachute jump for experiences

Yup, Russian planes are still some of the most agile around, they pay for it in other ways, but they sure look good doing aerobatics.

[Rictor]

If there's one thing I believe Russia will go down in history for, it's their military technologies. Twice as cheap, just as effective and purdy to look at. Ah, if only Serbia wasn't so destitute, we could buy some of those beauties.

[Col. Fishguts]

Whoa, neat stuff.

Is that the Su-37 with thrust vectoring I've seen there ?

The 2-seated Su-32 is also pretty cool, it's a friggin bomber in the airframe of a fighter.

EDIT: Dang typo

[Unknown Target]

Yes, that's definately a SU-37 with thrust-vectoring First time I've ever seen it in action too, very cool

[Kosh]

If there's one thing I believe Russia will go down in history for, it's their military technologies. Twice as cheap, just as effective and purdy to look at. Ah, if only Serbia wasn't so destitute, we could buy some of those beauties.

That was the only thing the Soviet Union was good at: Making weapons and rockets.

[NGTM-1R]

I dunno...my personal favorite video is from the MiG-29's debut at the Paris Airshow. The pilot screwed up the cobra manuver at low altitude, plane crashed and blew up. The pilot found time to thank his comrades for a zero-zero ejection seat. If you see a still sequence, it's really weird. The thing lances into the ground, and it looks like it's sticking out by it's nose before it starts to noticibly crumple...

Just call it Kuznetsov. Everybody else does. (Or Ship of a Thousand Names...it's gone through a lot since they gave it one instead of project number sometime in the '70s.) And if you think these things are cheap...you could buy two or three F-15Es for one of those. (Or a couple Super Hornets, Rafale Ms, or if you wait a few years Joint Strike Fighters.)

The SU-32 is...well, it's kinda like the F-111, only younger. Pity they sent all the -111s to the boneyard, they were nice aircraft.

[Herra Tohtori]

What I liked the best in this film was the girl flying the Su-26 (or actually, it is the latest version of this masterpiece, Su-31) in a most spectacular way. I daresay it's much more difficult to fly a lightweight powerful piston-engine plane like that than it is to fly those nice fancy über-techno fighters. Not to say that would be easy any way. Definitely it takes skill to keep in the formation like those guys do.

Nevertheless if I'd be offered a choice like "you can choose to have Spitfire Mk IX, P-51 D Mustang, Hawker Hurricane/Typhoon/Tempest and Bf 109 G-6 OR alternatively Su-37, MiG-29, F-16 and F-22", I'd definitely take the the first choice.

Reason for this? Well, those planes are just so much more badass ones than those fancy nancy jets they do these days.

-They have these great engines that sound an infinite amount better than any jet engine ever made
-They have propellers that also sound infinitely better than jets - an example on this link, that is a Rollc Royce Merlin powered Spitfire there *drools*
-Not only do they sound better, they also look better (to my eye) *drools more*
-On top of the cace they had whopping big guns attached to them and they actually demanded precise aim to hit anything with them, very unlike nowadays missiles with which you can hit your target from 150 km away without ever seeing him go down. For example, Hawker Hurricane was originally armed with 12 x .50-cal Browning machine guns, six in each wings. Later it was seen that this kind of armament was a bit of a toothpick so they fitted the planes with fricking machine cannons...

Plus, the girl was not that bad looking herself.  

[NGTM-1R]

For example, Hawker Hurricane was originally armed with 12 x .50-cal Browning machine guns, six in each wings. Later it was seen that this kind of armament was a bit of a toothpick so they fitted the planes with fricking machine cannons...

0,o

Original armament on the Hurricane Mk I was eight .303 calibur machineguns. Rifle-calibur, not particularly powerful. The Brits never adopted the .50cal (the Aussies did, but never for the Hurricane; they did arm some Spitfire Mk Vs and Beaufighters that way), but always mounted rifle-calibur machineguns, cannon, or some combination of the two. They drifted towards cannons (four 20mm on the final evolution of the Hurricane, the IID) because of experience in the Battle of Britain. Every nation that had to fight a serious bomber offensive began using cannon extensively. (Though even if the US had fought such an offensive they probably wouldn't have made major use of cannon. The .50cal round was powerful enough that it either bored a hole through the plane or embedded itself in something critical...like, say, the pilot or an engine block.)

[Herra Tohtori]

Yeah, sorry about that. My mistake.

What I had in mind was the Hurricane Mk. IIA that had either twelwe Brownings OR four Hispano cannons.

Anyway, the cannon version is far more powerful and dangerous enemy, so I think the Brits used that version more and shipped the Browning-equipped to Finland, for example.

There might also be a mistake in Finnish Hurricane Mk I's in IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles... If my memory serves me right it has 12 machine guns but I'll check that out and edit this later. [EDIT: No mistakes there. My memory was just playing tricks with me.
] Anyway, the armament of those fighters is quite irrelevant considering we're taking about aerobatics anyway.

Who else liked that girl's flying?

[Nuclear1]

I'm not sure what everyone was so impressed about. Aside from maybe a couple of things that the Su-37 was doing and some pretty lights and smoke, there's nothing there that I haven't seen the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds do. But there's probably something I'm missing or something I don't get that other people more familiar with aviation would see.

[Herra Tohtori]

Indeed. As I said, easily the most impressive thing about the video IMHO was the girl, Svetlana Kapanina (it reads on the screen, СВЕТЛАНА КАПАНИНА), and her flying skils.

Sure, the thrust vectoring systems and some ultimately high angle of attack maneuvering is cool to look but it gets boring quite soon.

[Col. Fishguts]

Watching jets in action never gets boring ... at least for tech geeks like me.

[Kosh]

Nevertheless if I'd be offered a choice like "you can choose to have Spitfire Mk IX, P-51 D Mustang, Hawker Hurricane/Typhoon/Tempest and Bf 109 G-6 OR alternatively Su-37, MiG-29, F-16 and F-22", I'd definitely take the the first choice.

You would choose that, then have an ME-262 come out of nowhere and rip you a new one.

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, at least Rollc Royce Merlin engine doesn't catch fire when you push it on full throttle in less than two minutes.

Me262 engines do catch fire if you spend less than two minutes accelerating them up to high rpms. Also, if your air speed is not great enough, they'll not receive enough coolant air which can also cause them to catch fire.

Anyway, found out some other cool videos inspired by this topic.

Enjoy.
Enjoy #2.

[Kosh]

Well, at least Rollc Royce Merlin engine doesn't catch fire when you push it on full throttle in less than two minutes.

Me262 engines do catch fire if you spend less than two minutes accelerating them up to high rpms. Also, if your air speed is not great enough, they'll not receive enough coolant air which can also cause them to catch fire.

Most of the problems with the ME-262 was because it's development was rushed. The engines were unreliable (they had to be replaced often), this is without question (also mostly because they didn't have the necessary materials to make them well, so they improvised by making them out of steel).

But when it was actually flying, look out. It could easily outperform any allied fighter. Piston engines died for a good reason.