YAK 50

YAKOVLEV Yak-50 Antidotum Airshow Leszno 2025

YAKOVLEV Yak-18T

YAKOVLEV Yak-18T (N8018T) over New York Harbor

This is not your run-of-the-mill small airplane:

The Yakovlev Yak-18T is a four- or five-seat fully aerobatic utility aircraft developed by Yakovlev. Introduced to train Aeroflot pilots, it has gained some popularity as a sportplane both inside and outside the former USSR. It is powered by a 360-400 hp Vedeneyev M14P radial engine, and is designed for stresses of +6.48/-3.24 g.

Introduced in 1967, Yakolev built 700 of them.

NANCHANG CJ-6A

NANCHANG (Hongdu Aircraft) CJ-6A over Texas

This airplane's history is very similar to the Xian X6 I posted a couple of days ago. Design came from the Soviet YAK-18 in 1958 and it is still being built today. They have made over 2,000 of them.

Yak-15 - the first Soviet jet fighter

Yak-15 - the first Soviet jet fighter
Skyships Eng
We've got lots of history about the development of jet aircraft in the West, but not so much from Russia, so this was kind of nice to hear. I am ambivalent about the advances made in Soviet science and technology. On one hand they were very impressive, they beat us into outer space after all. But Stalin was a murderous thug. Could they have done better, or at least without killing as many people, if they had a better leader? And why didn't they have a better leader? Why don't we have a better leader? 

P.S. Photo from the 1946 Air Parade:

Soviet pilots participating in the air parade on August 18, 1946 in honor of the Day of the Air Fleet of the USSR near Po-2 (U-2) biplane at the Kubinka airfield. In the center – P. Zubarev.

The Po-2 biplane has appeared here before.

Google Maps Aerodrom Kubinka

Soviet Yak-38 Vertical Take Off & Landing (VTOL) Jet Fighter

Yakovlev Yak-38 Soviet Naval Aviation
yolkhere
There are a couple of views of the Yak-38 sitting on the deck in the first part of this video. I'm watching this and I see the air inlet hatch open behind the pilot and I think that look's just like the F-35. Those dang Russians are pretty clever. They had a VTOL jet fighter 40 years ago, and we're just now getting around to building our own.
    Well, they were able to design one and make it work, but it was not what you would call a rousing success. Also they went broke and we didn't, so neener, neener, neener. I found this summary on Fiddler's Green, a paper model site.

Preceded by the Yak-36 'Freehand' and the barely related yak-36M, the USSR's first operational VTOL aircraft was the Yak-38 'Forger'. Superficially similar to the early Harrier, the 'Forger' was burdened with two extra lift engines, which increased the basic weight and reduced the fuel capacity. Payload was about one-third that of the Mk I Sea Harrier and endurance in hot weather about 15 minutes. A constant problem was ingestion of exhaust gases back into the engine, which caused power loss. Failure of one lift jet (which had an operating life of only about 22hours) would cause an immediate uncontrollable roll. The 'solution' to this was to fit a system that automatically ejected the pilot in the event of an engine failure. Unsurprisingly, as many as one-third of Russia's 'Forgers' were lost in accidents.

They only built 231 of them compared to more than 1600 MiG-29's.

Fiddler's Green has a several pictures of the Yak-38, including this one:

Seconds later , as you can see, two tiny turbines started to whirr and then the Yak 38 magically jumped from my hand and attacked the dog sitting under the kitchen table.

Update April 2022 replaced missing video with a different one.