Whilst crusing round DME and examining a good slice of current Russian aviation I started comparing some of the obvious design differences in Western V Russian built aircraft.
One particular oddity was the wing design and C of G differences.
With aircraft such as the TU114 and TU154, the wings are very noticably low slung, being higher at the fueselage than the tip. Most Western built aircraft go the other way or, at the very worst, are nearly level.
Can anyone explain why this may be and what advantages the Russians thought they were getting by doing this ?
Also, and to a lesser extent, many of the rear engine Russian planes seem to "lean" back rather a lot. Obvious reasons for this although again, its not a feature of Western built rear engine aircraft. The Russian rear engined planes all seemed to deploy a telescopic wheel to ensure they didn't alarm the missile counters
. Again, is this just the Russian way, using a simplistic failsafe rather than engineer something a little more stable ?