The Soviets tried all sorts of designs. About ten years ago we were on holiday
in Sardinia when we saw something very similar to the A-90, flying only about
500m off the west coast, heading north:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-90_Orlyonok
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-90_Orlyonok>
a wing-in-ground-effect machine. I thought at the time that the Italian Air
Force must have been using them for coastal patrol, but it seems from that page
that only the Soviets used them. It was a strange experience to see it, much
like my first sighting of a Hind D taxying on ‘my’ airfield at RAF Bruggen.
Chris
> On 14 Jun 2015, at 16:49, Chris Trask <christrask@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I was watching the documentary "Into the Cold" the other day, and spotted
> an interesting aircraft that I had not seen before. It's a high-wing twin
> turbofan, with the engines mounted above the wing's leading edge close to the
> fuselage. It looks a bit like the Boeing YC-14:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YC-14
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YC-14>
>
> but quite a bit smaller. After some creative searching with Google, I'm
> pretty sure that it's either an Antonov AN-72 or AN-74 "Coaler":
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-72
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-72>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-74
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-74>
>
> This is very interesting. I knew back in the day that the Soviets had
> pretty much copied the YC-14, using trailing arm landing gear in place of the
> Boeing jackpost, similar to the gear on the C-130. The Soviets adopted the
> Coandă effect to improve STOL performance, where some engine exhaust is
> diverted to the flaps.
>
> Until now, I did not know that this design was still around.
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|