Great video of new Indian carrier Vikramaditya

[artik]

The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdI8PWmYEdU

It is a beautiful collection of the video samples.

It looks like a editing of the original Russian TV program about the carrier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2VUX2I0Wc8 , the latter has more details but it features discussions in Russian so it is harder to see.

Some interesting points to look in the original program:

Takeoff gear barrier operation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L2VUX2I0Wc8#t=750

See the connected barriers from below. I must note that when the first Russian carrier started trials there was an incident when only one of the barriers had been removed causing an aircraft to spin with full afterburners [1] I assume they learned since then.

Another interesting thing is a system to move the planes inside the hangar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L2VUX2I0Wc8#t=325

BTW if you look on its flight deck and hangar it is tiny in comparison to Nimitz one (also the carrier is 45K tons insteam of 100K)

Their Optical Landing System Luna: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L2VUX2I0Wc8#t=1514

The Russian system is quite different from FLOS and from British mirror based ones [2] Originally it had only 3 colors vertically red/greed/orange to limit the gliding slope. During first trials they have found the 3 colors system is being too hard to handle - no gradual changes, the test pilots wanted to push mirror based system (like British one) that was much easier to handle but failed due to bureaucracy. On the operational system they switched from 3 to 5 lights to make the changes more gradual for the pilot (red,red-green,green,green-orange,orange).

According to the video it looks like 5 lights system with central green and two lights above/below.

[1] http://www.testpilot.ru/review/runway/deck/deck_x.htm
[2] http://testpilot.ru/review/runway/deck/deck_ix.htm

[GScholz]