7 ms·

Ken Thompson flies a MiG-29 (1999)

170 points by Serow225 12y ago

omilu 12y ago
wow awesome report. I'm not a pilot but i still found the account thrilling.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Walking up on the high moors in the Dales in Yorkshire you see the shadows first, moving up the valley floor. If you are quick, and look below your ridge, you can spot the two grey isosceles triangles as they disappear out of the head of the valley. A few seconds later, you hear the sound Treetop training looks fun (they are always in pairs and I'm sure they are playing tag) but I imagine can be a bit tense...
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I remember watching a Hercules flying along Glencoe from one of the mountain tops - it seemed rather weird looking down on such a large aircraft nimbly maneuvering along the narrow glen. Mind you - nothing beats the time as a kid when I got to watch a Vulcan doing low level aerobatics above the village I grew up in - an amazing sight and quite a remarkable sound!
    - mhandley 12y ago
      I fully agree about the Vulcan. I still remember the time as a kid on holiday in Anglesea - we were driving past the end of the runway at RAF Valley when a Vulcan took off right over us. It must be nearly 40 years ago now. The sound of those four Rolls Royce Olympus engines at full whack just over your head isn't something you ever forget.
      - krisgee 12y ago
        I was in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets when I was younger and took the Survival Instructor Course. We were only on base one night out of the week (Saturday night for Sunday morning review, then back inna woods) I remember one of the weeks the CF-18s were paying us a visit and doing flights at all hours. It was pretty awful at the time because that was your one guaranteed good night of sleep a week but I do remember being enchanted by the whine of the engines spooling. Shame I was colour blind and didn't get told till I was 15 (at which point my career choices were Astronaut, Fighter Pilot, SAR helicopter pilot).
        stan_rogers 12y ago
        That's depressing, that is. I was in the Forces when the 18s came online; Voodoos, 104s and 5s were current when I joined, and there were still a few Clunks in special trim doing real work. I suddenly feel old. And the Sea Kings I worked on are still in service. We got them when I was 3.
        krisgee 12y ago
        That's interesting! I worked at the CSA for awhile as one of my co-op internships and my supervisor would tell stories (mostly horror) about the big purchase of CF-18s and vetting all the code in the flight computer and such.
      - zentiggr 12y ago
        Lived in New Hampshire when Pease AFB was still in service - F-111s and KC-135Q tankers for support. The condo complex is still there - within 100 feet of centerline for runway 15 for takeoffs / landings. The sound of a fully loaded 135Q water-augmenting their exhaust on takeoff is rather like someone is reaching up into the sky and tearing ALL the cloth it's made of. Memorable :) Then there was the sight of the C-5A supply flights coming in, directly over the roof... easy to make out the tread on the nosewheel, and every detail of the fuselage. Wingtips out at about a 120-130 degree angle, looking up... will never forget that sight.
    - christiansmith 12y ago
      It's weird looking down on any aircraft while standing on solid ground. Have experienced this on a couple hikes and it's slightly disorienting.
Tepix 12y ago
I loved this quote: Then came the acrobatics. It was the same as the L39 but six G's instead of four G's and 4000 meters altitude instead of 2000 meters. At this time I realized that the ground crew had not connected my G suit to the pneumatics in the plane. At the bottom of every loop, my vision went from color to black-and-white. It happened in about a second like someone pulled down a no-color shade in front of my face. Shortly after that, the black-and-white faded into grey-and-grey and finally just grey. Very strange feeling. I didn't black out but I was able to know exactly what it would feel like. After the G's subsided, my vision returned in reverse sequence.
quickpost 12y ago
In case anyone is wondering, this occurred Dec. 11 - 17, 1999. (The year is missing in the article).
- cynwoody 12y ago
  1994, based on this usenet post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories/_Ohb4-f-H38 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories...
  - quickpost 12y ago
    Good catch. Thanks! I was referencing this source: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?topic=16574.0 http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?topic=16574.0 And "cal 1999" where it looked like Dec. 11 - 17 was a traditional week.
srean 12y ago
At 8000 meters, Vladimir took over and performed a cobra maneuver. He flew level and pulled up so fast that the plane stalled. The plane continued to move horizontally in a flat stall while pointing up. At some point Vladimir performed some magic and the plane leaned over horizontal and flew normally. The result was a loss of 300 kmph in seconds. This was described to me as a courtesy maneuver to allow tailgating traffic to pass. Which year was this? I thought 'cobra' was a post Sukhoi-27 thing. I didnt even know a MiG-29 could do that. Can all of them do it, or some later versions ? @quickpost Thanks you answered my question.
- azth 12y ago
  > I didnt even know a MiG-29 could do that. They sure can :) They can also do tail slides. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3sr4HqF3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3sr4HqF3E
- dingaling 12y ago
  > Which year was this? I thought 'cobra' was a post Sukhoi-27 thing. The aerodynamics of both the MiG-29 and Su-27 are modelled on a TsAGI [1] reference design, so they share similar flight characteristics. Mikoyan cut some corners with the structure that limit the MiG-29 to 7.5G above a certain airspeed ( 0.85M ) whereas the '27 is capable of 9g throughout its envelope. [1] The Soviet-era equivalent of NASA Ames FRC, with a bit more clout
- 001sky 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Cobra#Examples_of_aircraft_capable_of_the_maneuver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Cobra#Examples_of...
- gchokov 12y ago
  One of the most iconic scenes in the Top Gun as well :)
  - azth 12y ago
    The movie didn't have any real Russian planes though right? IIRC, they used F-5's and pretended they were MIGs.
signa11 12y ago
this is pretty nice: "If you have been to Moscow during Soviet times, you will probably remember paying almost nothing to be ignored by a waiter in a restaurant. Now you pay a fortune to be ignored by ten waiters."
throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Interesting figures about L-39 jet trainers. The US currently has 242 in private ownership ("N" tail number), involved in 14 fatal accidents since 1998. So a private L-39 would have had a >5% risk of killing its pilot to date, or about 0.4%/year. http://www.l39.com/content/incidents http://www.l39.com/content/incidents For comparison, the motorcycle fatality rate is about 0.1% per registered motorcycle per year, http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/special_reports_and_issue_briefs/special_report/2009_05_14/html/entire.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...
- callmeed 12y ago
  Does the L-39 not have an ejection seat standard? After skimming a few of the reports, at least 2 of the accidents were due to racing or aerobatics. I imagine that carries somewhat of a risk regardless of aircraft. I've always dreamed of owning an L-39 since that can be had for around $200K http://www.internationaljets.com/jetaircraft.html http://www.internationaljets.com/jetaircraft.html
  - throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
    "After skimming a few of the reports, at least 2 of the accidents were due to racing or aerobatics." Yes, I should have said this explicitly. The risk isn't caused by it being poorly-engineered, but that as an aerobatic fighter jet it will tend to attract risk seekers. So I guess it'd be analogous to, say, crash rates involving sports cars.
    - VLM 12y ago
      "but that as an aerobatic fighter jet it will tend to attract risk seekers" Not just risk but showing off. In a similar manner most crashes involving home builts / experimentals is low and slow showing off. Its the cessna 172 pilots that croak because of get-home-itis and bad weather and bad navigation and related CFIT. Its hard to get killed at 8000 ft other than maybe catastrophic disassembly (well, here, where the highest mountain is only 1600 ft...). But seemingly anything happens at 100 feet and you're pretty much dead, unless you're lucky. Low altitude flight is very much like drunk driving which is safe at least 99.99% of the time if not more, but if anything ever happens oh boy are you in trouble...
ekianjo 12y ago
The last line was great: > Was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? No.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jestinjoy1 12y ago
Wow he know how to fly a plane! Why he went to Russia? Whether there is similar service offered in US? MiG-29 recently made headlines in India, the first and one of the largest export user, when one crashed http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/mig29-crashes-near-jamnagar-air-base/article5329357.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/mig29-cra...
- serf 12y ago
  I don't believe there is any equivalent here. People race planes, but military planes are forbidden I believe. here's the kind of thing offered here : http://aircombat.com/about/our-aircraft/ http://aircombat.com/about/our-aircraft/ fast and aerobatic planes, but not fighters.
  - TylerE 12y ago
    There isn't any specific prohibition against owning US jets AFAIK, but not many ever hit the market. WWII era stuff is common. Some of the early jets (e.g. F-86, F-100s, F-5/T-38) exist in private hands. In general, the Russian stuff translates better to private ownership because there is much less specialized support equipment or maintaince required - in general the soviet's built stuff for a real SHTF scenario, where-as the US was much more willing to complicate the design to gain a small edge.
RobotCaleb 12y ago
About 7 years ago I was fortunate enough to receive a ride in an F-16. I passed out that night and got up to write about it the next morning while it was still fresh in my head. http://blahg.res0l.net/2008/10/viper-ride-october-12-2007/ http://blahg.res0l.net/2008/10/viper-ride-october-12-2007/
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
View the source of this page. Older web pages do a good job of reminding me that the most important part of a website is information dissemination, not flashy bits.
- cynwoody 12y ago
  Indeed. The page is refreshingly free of JS and CSS and weighs in at a measly 18.8 kb. But it would have been helpful to have included a full date. Somewhere? Anywhere. Even (especially!) the URL? Sheesh! A quick google indicates this took place in 1994, as indicated by this usenet post to rec.aviation.stories: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories/_Ohb4-f-H38 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories...
- keithpeter 12y ago
  And if you want a narrow column to make the text easier to read, you just resize or tile the browser window! My vanity site has html with very light css, no javascript. Works ok on Blackberry as well as laptop. Loads fast. All static so very small bandwidth/processor use (shared hosting). Emergency edits using ssh / nano. I'm wondering how much electricity we use serving and parsing all the presentation code with modern sites?
- colinramsay 12y ago
  A blog article on my personal site (for example [1]) pulls down ~13KB in a third of a second. It's also responsive and easier to read than the article link (IMO, obviously). It's a massive shame that older websites show off the regression of developers when it comes to page weight and bandwidth considerations, particular when it's not difficult to create a speedy yet attractive site [2]. [1] http://colinramsay.co.uk/2014/04/23/i-am-so-annoyed-about-rss.html http://colinramsay.co.uk/2014/04/23/i-am-so-annoyed-about-rs... [2] I'm not bigging up my own site here, just the general principle!
chrissyb 12y ago
What a thrilling read! Thanks to OP and Ken.
kndyry 12y ago
Incredible. I can't imagine taking 6G without the benefit of a suit, never mind repeatedly. This story very much reminds me of another account by Hans Krohn [0], though he flew the MiG-21 (in a full motion simulator). [0] http://www.hanskrohn.com/FlightSimStories/Mig/Mig.htm http://www.hanskrohn.com/FlightSimStories/Mig/Mig.htm
dojomouse 12y ago
Really enjoyed the read, but I don't understand the line about going from 500km/h - 1000km/h in 5 seconds... treetop level or otherwise. Is that really possible? I think my math is off if so. Mass with a 900kg fuel load looks to be around 12,000kg Max thrust is 162kN for both with afterburner. 500km/h = 139m/s 1000km/h = 278m/s Going from one to the other in 5s means an average acceleration of 27.8m/s^2... or almost 3 g, which is monstrous! But how does this work? Solving F=ma for a gives a=F/m = 162000/12000 = 13.5m/s^2 And that's before accounting for the not insignificant thrust required just to overcome the aerodynamic drag. Is it just an understandable overestimation of the acceleration due to the direct experience of it? Or am I missing something? Either way, awesome.

170 points by Serow225 12y ago

omilu 12y ago

wow awesome report. I'm not a pilot but i still found the account thrilling.

keithpeter 12y ago
Walking up on the high moors in the Dales in Yorkshire you see the shadows first, moving up the valley floor. If you are quick, and look below your ridge, you can spot the two grey isosceles triangles as they disappear out of the head of the valley. A few seconds later, you hear the sound Treetop training looks fun (they are always in pairs and I'm sure they are playing tag) but I imagine can be a bit tense...
- arethuza 12y ago
  I remember watching a Hercules flying along Glencoe from one of the mountain tops - it seemed rather weird looking down on such a large aircraft nimbly maneuvering along the narrow glen. Mind you - nothing beats the time as a kid when I got to watch a Vulcan doing low level aerobatics above the village I grew up in - an amazing sight and quite a remarkable sound!
  - mhandley 12y ago
    I fully agree about the Vulcan. I still remember the time as a kid on holiday in Anglesea - we were driving past the end of the runway at RAF Valley when a Vulcan took off right over us. It must be nearly 40 years ago now. The sound of those four Rolls Royce Olympus engines at full whack just over your head isn't something you ever forget.
    - krisgee 12y ago
      I was in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets when I was younger and took the Survival Instructor Course. We were only on base one night out of the week (Saturday night for Sunday morning review, then back inna woods) I remember one of the weeks the CF-18s were paying us a visit and doing flights at all hours. It was pretty awful at the time because that was your one guaranteed good night of sleep a week but I do remember being enchanted by the whine of the engines spooling. Shame I was colour blind and didn't get told till I was 15 (at which point my career choices were Astronaut, Fighter Pilot, SAR helicopter pilot).
      - stan_rogers 12y ago
        That's depressing, that is. I was in the Forces when the 18s came online; Voodoos, 104s and 5s were current when I joined, and there were still a few Clunks in special trim doing real work. I suddenly feel old. And the Sea Kings I worked on are still in service. We got them when I was 3.
        krisgee 12y ago
        That's interesting! I worked at the CSA for awhile as one of my co-op internships and my supervisor would tell stories (mostly horror) about the big purchase of CF-18s and vetting all the code in the flight computer and such.
    - zentiggr 12y ago
      Lived in New Hampshire when Pease AFB was still in service - F-111s and KC-135Q tankers for support. The condo complex is still there - within 100 feet of centerline for runway 15 for takeoffs / landings. The sound of a fully loaded 135Q water-augmenting their exhaust on takeoff is rather like someone is reaching up into the sky and tearing ALL the cloth it's made of. Memorable :) Then there was the sight of the C-5A supply flights coming in, directly over the roof... easy to make out the tread on the nosewheel, and every detail of the fuselage. Wingtips out at about a 120-130 degree angle, looking up... will never forget that sight.
  - christiansmith 12y ago
    It's weird looking down on any aircraft while standing on solid ground. Have experienced this on a couple hikes and it's slightly disorienting.

Tepix 12y ago

I loved this quote: Then came the acrobatics. It was the same as the L39 but six G's instead of four G's and 4000 meters altitude instead of 2000 meters. At this time I realized that the ground crew had not connected my G suit to the pneumatics in the plane. At the bottom of every loop, my vision went from color to black-and-white. It happened in about a second like someone pulled down a no-color shade in front of my face. Shortly after that, the black-and-white faded into grey-and-grey and finally just grey. Very strange feeling. I didn't black out but I was able to know exactly what it would feel like. After the G's subsided, my vision returned in reverse sequence.

quickpost 12y ago

In case anyone is wondering, this occurred Dec. 11 - 17, 1999. (The year is missing in the article).

cynwoody 12y ago
1994, based on this usenet post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories/_Ohb4-f-H38 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories...
- quickpost 12y ago
  Good catch. Thanks! I was referencing this source: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?topic=16574.0 http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?topic=16574.0 And "cal 1999" where it looked like Dec. 11 - 17 was a traditional week.

srean 12y ago

At 8000 meters, Vladimir took over and performed a cobra maneuver. He flew level and pulled up so fast that the plane stalled. The plane continued to move horizontally in a flat stall while pointing up. At some point Vladimir performed some magic and the plane leaned over horizontal and flew normally. The result was a loss of 300 kmph in seconds. This was described to me as a courtesy maneuver to allow tailgating traffic to pass. Which year was this? I thought 'cobra' was a post Sukhoi-27 thing. I didnt even know a MiG-29 could do that. Can all of them do it, or some later versions ? @quickpost Thanks you answered my question.

azth 12y ago
> I didnt even know a MiG-29 could do that. They sure can :) They can also do tail slides. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3sr4HqF3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3sr4HqF3E
dingaling 12y ago
> Which year was this? I thought 'cobra' was a post Sukhoi-27 thing. The aerodynamics of both the MiG-29 and Su-27 are modelled on a TsAGI [1] reference design, so they share similar flight characteristics. Mikoyan cut some corners with the structure that limit the MiG-29 to 7.5G above a certain airspeed ( 0.85M ) whereas the '27 is capable of 9g throughout its envelope. [1] The Soviet-era equivalent of NASA Ames FRC, with a bit more clout
001sky 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Cobra#Examples_of_aircraft_capable_of_the_maneuver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Cobra#Examples_of...
gchokov 12y ago
One of the most iconic scenes in the Top Gun as well :)
- azth 12y ago
  The movie didn't have any real Russian planes though right? IIRC, they used F-5's and pretended they were MIGs.

signa11 12y ago

this is pretty nice: "If you have been to Moscow during Soviet times, you will probably remember paying almost nothing to be ignored by a waiter in a restaurant. Now you pay a fortune to be ignored by ten waiters."

throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago

Interesting figures about L-39 jet trainers. The US currently has 242 in private ownership ("N" tail number), involved in 14 fatal accidents since 1998. So a private L-39 would have had a >5% risk of killing its pilot to date, or about 0.4%/year. http://www.l39.com/content/incidents http://www.l39.com/content/incidents For comparison, the motorcycle fatality rate is about 0.1% per registered motorcycle per year, http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/special_reports_and_issue_briefs/special_report/2009_05_14/html/entire.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

callmeed 12y ago
Does the L-39 not have an ejection seat standard? After skimming a few of the reports, at least 2 of the accidents were due to racing or aerobatics. I imagine that carries somewhat of a risk regardless of aircraft. I've always dreamed of owning an L-39 since that can be had for around $200K http://www.internationaljets.com/jetaircraft.html http://www.internationaljets.com/jetaircraft.html
- throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
  "After skimming a few of the reports, at least 2 of the accidents were due to racing or aerobatics." Yes, I should have said this explicitly. The risk isn't caused by it being poorly-engineered, but that as an aerobatic fighter jet it will tend to attract risk seekers. So I guess it'd be analogous to, say, crash rates involving sports cars.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "but that as an aerobatic fighter jet it will tend to attract risk seekers" Not just risk but showing off. In a similar manner most crashes involving home builts / experimentals is low and slow showing off. Its the cessna 172 pilots that croak because of get-home-itis and bad weather and bad navigation and related CFIT. Its hard to get killed at 8000 ft other than maybe catastrophic disassembly (well, here, where the highest mountain is only 1600 ft...). But seemingly anything happens at 100 feet and you're pretty much dead, unless you're lucky. Low altitude flight is very much like drunk driving which is safe at least 99.99% of the time if not more, but if anything ever happens oh boy are you in trouble...

ekianjo 12y ago

The last line was great: > Was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? No.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jestinjoy1 12y ago

Wow he know how to fly a plane! Why he went to Russia? Whether there is similar service offered in US? MiG-29 recently made headlines in India, the first and one of the largest export user, when one crashed http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/mig29-crashes-near-jamnagar-air-base/article5329357.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/mig29-cra...

serf 12y ago
I don't believe there is any equivalent here. People race planes, but military planes are forbidden I believe. here's the kind of thing offered here : http://aircombat.com/about/our-aircraft/ http://aircombat.com/about/our-aircraft/ fast and aerobatic planes, but not fighters.
- TylerE 12y ago
  There isn't any specific prohibition against owning US jets AFAIK, but not many ever hit the market. WWII era stuff is common. Some of the early jets (e.g. F-86, F-100s, F-5/T-38) exist in private hands. In general, the Russian stuff translates better to private ownership because there is much less specialized support equipment or maintaince required - in general the soviet's built stuff for a real SHTF scenario, where-as the US was much more willing to complicate the design to gain a small edge.

RobotCaleb 12y ago

About 7 years ago I was fortunate enough to receive a ride in an F-16. I passed out that night and got up to write about it the next morning while it was still fresh in my head. http://blahg.res0l.net/2008/10/viper-ride-october-12-2007/ http://blahg.res0l.net/2008/10/viper-ride-october-12-2007/

Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago

View the source of this page. Older web pages do a good job of reminding me that the most important part of a website is information dissemination, not flashy bits.

cynwoody 12y ago
Indeed. The page is refreshingly free of JS and CSS and weighs in at a measly 18.8 kb. But it would have been helpful to have included a full date. Somewhere? Anywhere. Even (especially!) the URL? Sheesh! A quick google indicates this took place in 1994, as indicated by this usenet post to rec.aviation.stories: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories/_Ohb4-f-H38 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories...
keithpeter 12y ago
And if you want a narrow column to make the text easier to read, you just resize or tile the browser window! My vanity site has html with very light css, no javascript. Works ok on Blackberry as well as laptop. Loads fast. All static so very small bandwidth/processor use (shared hosting). Emergency edits using ssh / nano. I'm wondering how much electricity we use serving and parsing all the presentation code with modern sites?
colinramsay 12y ago
A blog article on my personal site (for example [1]) pulls down ~13KB in a third of a second. It's also responsive and easier to read than the article link (IMO, obviously). It's a massive shame that older websites show off the regression of developers when it comes to page weight and bandwidth considerations, particular when it's not difficult to create a speedy yet attractive site [2]. [1] http://colinramsay.co.uk/2014/04/23/i-am-so-annoyed-about-rss.html http://colinramsay.co.uk/2014/04/23/i-am-so-annoyed-about-rs... [2] I'm not bigging up my own site here, just the general principle!

chrissyb 12y ago

What a thrilling read! Thanks to OP and Ken.

kndyry 12y ago

Incredible. I can't imagine taking 6G without the benefit of a suit, never mind repeatedly. This story very much reminds me of another account by Hans Krohn [0], though he flew the MiG-21 (in a full motion simulator). [0] http://www.hanskrohn.com/FlightSimStories/Mig/Mig.htm http://www.hanskrohn.com/FlightSimStories/Mig/Mig.htm

dojomouse 12y ago

Really enjoyed the read, but I don't understand the line about going from 500km/h - 1000km/h in 5 seconds... treetop level or otherwise. Is that really possible? I think my math is off if so. Mass with a 900kg fuel load looks to be around 12,000kg Max thrust is 162kN for both with afterburner. 500km/h = 139m/s 1000km/h = 278m/s Going from one to the other in 5s means an average acceleration of 27.8m/s^2... or almost 3 g, which is monstrous! But how does this work? Solving F=ma for a gives a=F/m = 162000/12000 = 13.5m/s^2 And that's before accounting for the not insignificant thrust required just to overcome the aerodynamic drag. Is it just an understandable overestimation of the acceleration due to the direct experience of it? Or am I missing something? Either way, awesome.