Ken Thompson flies a MiG-29 (1999)

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/ken/mig.html

by Serow225 • 12 years ago

170 54 12 years ago

omilu• 12 years ago

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

keithpeter2• 12 years 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• 12 years 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!

quickpost2• 12 years ago

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

cynwoody2• 12 years ago

1994, based on this usenet post:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.stories...

quickpost2• 12 years ago

Good catch. Thanks! I was referencing this source:

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• 12 years 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.

azth2• 12 years 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

dingaling• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugachev%27s_Cobra#Examples_of...

gchokov2• 12 years ago

One of the most iconic scenes in the Top Gun as well :)

azth2• 12 years ago

The movie didn't have any real Russian planes though right? IIRC, they used F-5's and pretended they were MIGs.

signa11• 12 years 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_yy2Di2• 12 years 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

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/pub...

callmeed• 12 years 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

throwaway_yy2Di2• 12 years 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.

Serow2255• 12 years ago

I believe that it's not uncommon for the ejection seats in private L-39's to be inop, my guess would be due to the cost to keep them maintained and/or that the consequences of a poorly maintained system ejecting spontaneously or accidentally is worse than just having them disabled. I know that when I had the chance to fly the second seat in one, I had to wear a parachute and was instructed on how to pop the canopy and bail out in an emergency situation.

Serow2255• 12 years ago

See my other post about maintenance/repair costs. And they suck down Jet-A like it's going out of style, from what I remember a 30-minute aerobatic joy ride required about $500 of fuel (and that was 5 years ago when avgas was a lot cheaper per gallon). When you went full throttle you could literally watch the fuel gauge needle slowly drop...

nostrademons• 12 years ago

You can buy a Mig-21 for anywhere from $50-150K:

http://www.controller.com/listingsdetail/aircraft-for-sale/M...

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/airplane-mig-21um....

http://www.globalplanesearch.com/usa/aerobatic/jets/mig/

However, I've heard that hiring a pilot to teach you how to fly it without killing yourself runs about $2000/hour, and without the training, your chance of killing yourself on the first flight is pretty close to 100%.

Serow2255• 12 years ago

Yeah, but the problem with any of these old/'affordable' ex-fighter/trainer jets is that when something of any significance breaks, you might as well just walk away from the plane because fixing it will cost more than what you paid for the thing.

RobotCaleb4• 12 years ago

Coincidentally there was one parked outside my office window today.

http://i.imgur.com/aBTSR75.jpg

Serow2255• 12 years ago

Where do you work and what do you do? :)

prescindor2• 12 years ago

Might that be APA? With the Rockies in the background?

ekianjo• 12 years ago

The last line was great:

Was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? No.

jestinjoy1• 12 years 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-cra...

serf• 12 years 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/

fast and aerobatic planes, but not fighters.

TylerE• 12 years 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.

RobotCaleb4• 12 years 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/

Sir_Cmpwn• 12 years 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.

cynwoody2• 12 years 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...

keithpeter2• 12 years 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• 12 years 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-rs...

[2] I'm not bigging up my own site here, just the general principle!

Tepix• 12 years 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.

chrissyb• 12 years ago

What a thrilling read! Thanks to OP and Ken.

kndyry• 12 years 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

dojomouse• 12 years 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.

Ken Thompson flies a MiG-29 (1999)

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