• Low Pass

The picture is the story . . . .


Well, almost. A friend—a former 747-400 captain and current Yak-52 owner—writes:

On Saturday night, I had dinner with the Chief Test Pilot of the Sukhoi Design Bureau (and his family) at their dacha in the forest near Zhukovsky east of Moscow. . . .This guy, Slava (at least at his dacha that is his name), is an interesting guy. He is "Hero of the Soviet Union", and, you will probably recall the absolutely fantastic display that has been going around the web of an Su-30MK doing ultra low speed high AOA maneuvering while putting out good smoke so that one could see, very graphically, what the airplane was doing. He's the guy flying the airplane....and in the back seat was his son, also a test pilot at Sukhoi on the Su-30 program. Last month, he was promoted to president of Irkusk Industry, which is the production company of the Sukhoi fighters....while retaining his flight status and Chief Test Pilot status.

Said video: