Originally Posted by
Buster Hyman
Would someone happen to know why wouldn't the Su-25 didn't shut down the donks straight away? Just curious.
Dual hydraulic systems....probably not a great idea to turn off the noise airborne.
I looked at buying one that was available in 2015, it is not a bad plane, nor was the MiG 21, or 17 or 19. The 15 sucked... my own opinion.
The soviet aircraft I have flown had very simple and reliable emergency gear extensions... one though was worth reading the label, as the gear was a red T handle on one side of the stick, the other side of the stick had a red T handle too that jettisoned the tip tanks. I used the emergency gear extension once, and it worked pretty well.
As it is a combat recovery flight, all bets are off as to what would work or not, or whether it was a low drag approach. I would go with the battle damage, more than maintenance, as I found that most soviet planes were pretty darn well built to be maintained with a ball peen hammer, other than hydraulics. There was a lot about the MiG-21 [well, later versions, the earlier versions are not much fun high speed on the deck, but later, not bad at all] that was nicer to have than the A-4 and F-4, TSAgI knew a thing or two about building outhouses with pretty good aero.
Using the drogue chutes, interesting, they seemed to add to directional stability, haven't seen that in the AFM of any aircraft, but have led a sheltered life.
PS: have just been in contact with some of my former colleagues from Russia. They are disgusted by Putin, and they have their kids well outside of Russia, but then they did that after the insult of 2014. Putin has embarrassed a lot of people.