4 ms·
I once got to ride in an An-2 on a tourist sightseeing flight. I've always remembered the sense that the pilot didn't even bother to line up with the runway ahe
by schoen 2y ago
I once got to ride in an An-2 on a tourist sightseeing flight. I've always remembered the sense that the pilot didn't even bother to line up with the runway ahead of time when landing, but simply took a gentle turn onto it upon reaching it, at roughly the speed of a car.
I'm sure this is a slight exaggeration in my memory, but it really was able to fly incredibly slowly and take turns in an incredibly short distance.
- hakfoo 2y agoYou'd think that sort of handling would make for some interesting use cases-- aerial photography for example, maybe some sorts of cropdusting where the slower speed offers more precision. I wonder if there's anything else built that fits that market today, since I suppose it's a hard-sell to convince Western pilots and businesses to buy Soviet old-stock.
- int_19h 2y agoAn-2 specifically is kinda popular with Western collectors, as far as I know. But if there were still broad applications for this kind of performance, surely we'd see more modern designs along those lines? For An-2, the ability to perform such tricks wasn't really the goal, just a side effect. The goal was to have a cheap mass-produced utility plane that could take off and land on very rough makeshift airstrips in remote locations, which were plentiful in USSR at the time when it was designed (~1950). These days there's probably way fewer locations like that, and for those that do exist, helicopters provide an adequate solution without the need to design a new dedicated airframe. Note that all those benefits aren't free, either: the downsides of the design include high fuel consumption and high noise levels. As far as I know, even in Russia, most present-day use of An-2 is for skydiving.