Post amazingly cool pictures of aircraft (Volume 3)

Not QUITE a P51. It's a 3/4 scale replica with a smaller (but still sizeable) V12, and a 3-bladed prop.

These images hopefully give you a better idea.





Still bloody cool (and not slow), and if I ever find time, funds and motivation to not just do my PPL but actually get good, it'd be top of my wish-list, and sod carrying passengers!

Mostly fun, with 1% terror.

Ugliest plane ever ?



PZL, or the Polish State Aircraft Factory, is today known for its extremely aerodynamic and high performance gliders, but back in the era of Socialism, things like “fuel economy”, “aesthetics”, “performance” or “usefulness” were not in high importance.

Instead, USSR told PZL to build a successor for Antonov An-2 agricultural biplane. They were told to build it around a Ivchenko-Progress AI-25 jet engine - the same of Aero L-39 Albatros.

Now jet engines make sense only on two things - one is altitude and the other is speed. In all other purposes, propeller is the way to go. The engineers at PZL said “no, we cannot do that - we should try a turboprop or piston engine instead” - but in Socialism, the comrades decide and engineers - those questionable semi-intellectual three-quarter dissidents - do as they are told. Accordingly, the design team were compelled to use such an engine due to political factors rather than practical ones. So they designed the world’s only biplane jet crop duster.

But this sensemaking of speed and altitude obviously didn't translate to the M-15, whose top speed of 120 knots would get walked by a briskly-driven VW Golf with a long enough runway. Crop dusting isn’t exactly a high altitude task either. Having two sets of wings, the M-15 had an exceptionally slow stall speed of 67 knots, and it was described pleasant to fly. But even as the production-grade M-15 made its maiden flight on May 20th, 1973, it was clear proceedings wouldn't go smoothly.

Many problems were had by ground crews with the M-15's turbojet engine. For some context, the Antonov An-2's Shvetsov engine was developed from the American Wright R-1820 Cyclone of World War II fame. Therefore, they could typically be fixed with the toolset you'd use to repair a tractor engine. By comparison, Polish farmers found the more complicated turbofans in the M-15 to be a maintenance nightmare. Who could blame them, after all? They're not aviation mechanics, just humble farmers.

Moreover, the engineers at PZL were not completely humourless cogwheel brains. They named the M-15 as Belphegor - the Demon of Vile Noises in the Catholic mythology. PZL M-15 was just as noisy as its namesake. The engineers knew this contraption was meant to convert fuel into noise, and it got its name to reflect the function. It has been one of the noisiest aircraft ever.

In the end, Soviet and Polish aviation officials determined that not only was the Bephegor pretty much useless at crop dusting but also that the venerable An-2, indeed, could operate indefinitely.

Even in 2024, upgrade programs to retrofit classic An-2s with newer, more efficient engines and fancy avionics upgrades continue to succeed in places where more expensive Western aircraft aren't an option. The type is even still in production, under license in China. Meanwhile, the Polish M-15's production wouldn't even make it ten years. The type was discontinued in 1981 without pomp or circumstance, with a measly 175 units built. The type was never operated outside of the Soviet Union or Poland. There are no airworthy Belphegors any more, but several have survived in museums.

Courtesy of Red Bull:

An oldie...

10:08 June 30th 1973, Concorde 001

Avro 707B
From my father’s log book in 1956 while at empire test pilots school.
Only got to fly it once as shortly after this someone pranged it.

Very cool

That Hunter 1 WT572 in his log a few below the 707, was a well known machine that served at ETPS, and was finished in an overall silver finish. It was the 18th production Hunter built.

Thank you both. interesting about the Hunter. My father was a very modest man who rarely told stories about his flying years. But there are 8 volumes of log books like that.
The list of what he flew is extraordinary.

Or be Eric Brown.