At Farnborough ’88 I went out of my way to make personal contact with the MiG pilots. CTP Valery Menitsky, Anatoy Kvotchur and Roman Taskaev However this was not easy because the Berlin Wall was not consigned to history until 13 months later. Consequently minders were very much in evidence whenever one met the pilots and since any conversation required an interpreter, the whole exercise lacked the easy informality that normally exists between pilots at airshows.
It will be difficult for youngsters today to appreciate the atmosphere of suspicion and fear that existed between the east and west during the cold war. Therefore, make no mistake, both the Russians and the Brits were very much feeling their way during personal contacts in 1988.
Right from the beginning of my contacts with the MiG team, I had reasoned that they had no more control over their political circumstances than we as pilots had over ours. Suffice it to say that I invited the MiG pilots to the traditional dinner for the Red Arrows in the BAe chalet on the Sunday evening after the show. Things progressed further at Paris the following year such that I felt able to write to their chief designer, Michael Waldenberg, to ask if I could fly the aircraft at the next Farnborough. This resulted in a telex (those were the days) in which he agreed to talk about it at the show.
PS Sorry dunno anything about the Canberra