Originally posted by Morpheus
Did any of you watch the military chan that was about the russian a/f. It was almost sad to see things in such disrepair over there. Air strips are falling apart, cracks, grass growing up and down... A shortage in just about anything you can think of. It did give me a greater respect for their planes though. The Mig29 is a monster. There is something about russian jets... Tho they will never come close to being as cool as a Tomcat.
Well, from what I have heard the situation in VVS got much better in last 5 years. They fly now as often as Americans. Nothing like 30 hours a year in early 90s.
Airstrips falling apart, grass etc - it happens, but Soviet planes are supposed to opearte from such airstrips, or even from grass fields. In 1993 when American F-15s visited training center in Lipetsk - they said they refuse to take off from such a dirty airstrip, so they had a Su-27 taking off before them to wipe concrete with exaust. Another problem for Americans was that they had problems with Russian fuel - IIRC they had engine failures on the way back.
Do you know when VVS decided to clean airfields from snow in winter? In 1940! In our climate concrete simply cracks, and we have to live with it. Even Tu-144 SST airliner was able to land on grass field, and did it at least once.
About airshow rules: in Russia on airshows there is at least 500m between the "zone" and public. On Moscow Airshow this distance is always secured by chains of internal corps soldiers. My first airshow in Kubinka, 1992 IIRC - the weather condidtions were so bad that I almost froze and got wet to the last thread in my clothes, clouds were so low that in Msk they covered half of the University building (180m tall on 80m hill), but pilots didn't skip a single maneuver.
In L'vov they didn't even inform pilots of where the public will be

Amateurs, still trying to pretend they have air force

Another thing about Russian aerobatic teams: they fly unmodified combat planes, I mean they may simply attach weapons to hardpoints and take off for combat.