Have you ever fallen in love at first sight Guys ??
Well i have...
Some people will think she's boxy and ugly .. some will say she's got ugly legs .. i don't care .. she's a beauty for me ...
I've had the pleasure to fly
LY-AOM a Lithuian registered YAK 52 this weekend on my home airfield LOGI - Trieben. And i can only tell you this is the closest i've ever got to flying a "real" warbird!
I've been flying her with a friend of mine Capt. Michael Vötter, an A340 Captain and passionate aerobatic pilot who is also an aerobatics instructor.
Fisrt we did our walk around and he gave me an overall picture of the airplanes systeems..
First of she's HUGE! A big aircraft standing on long legs. The russian M14P Radial is powering a big 2 blade prop which resembles more paddles than usual prop blades. The engine is geared and therfore the prop's running at remarkably low RPM. The undercarriage is tricycle retractable and has the weird design of NOT being retracted into wheel wells but staying open on the underside of the wiing and fuselage. The retraction is by means of pynamatic system which also powers the split flaps and the breaks (pneumatic breaks .. scary concept..)
The fuselage and wing are all metall and the control surfaces are fabric covered.. i was amazed on how little friction and play is in the controls.
The Cockpit features tandem seating with completely identical cockpits forward and aft. The rear cockpit which was the istructors place as per the design features some "simulation switches" that can simulated failures in the forward cockpit of avionics and systems (including the breaks... and THAT switch isn't even safe guraded)
Overall the Cockpit is VERY fighter like (too bad the guy who took the pictures didn't do a cockpit shot..), featuring a big Throttle and prop lever on the left wall and a pretty big stick in the middle and oil cooler and cowl shutter controls to the right. I was missing initially the Mixture control but the M14 doesn't have one (at least in this application) it's stopped just with the ignition and runs in an "auto-ritch" mode.
Michael helped me to get strappedinto the rear cockpit. So i got strapped into my chute and then onto the seat. The Russian designers obviously didn't have LONG pilots in their mind as they designed the cockpit because even tho i'm a rather short guy (5'4") i had the rudder peddals in the full forward position and was sitting in a very upright position (in austria we have the saying of sitting like "an ape on a grinder"
). Visibility to the sides and the rear was excellent, but forward visibility was somewhat restricted by the pilot in the front seat, but not too bad afterall (i'm doing tail wheel conversions in our club from the rear seat of a PA-18 so i'm used to fly with no forward visibility).
After getting strapped in and doing the Cockpit pre-flight we got ready to fire the M14 up. Michael had pulled some Prop blades to clear the lower cylinders from oil before and theengine was still medium warm, but still required a healthy amount of priming. The engine came to life after the second blade passed infront and settled to a nice and stable purr within seconds. I was again amazed by the rather low rpm of the engine .. just the vibration matched about my expectations
.. the whole airplane is shaking with low level vibrations that are perfect to shake any bolt loos that's not safety wired...
DUring warmup and recharge of the main pneumatic system, which is also used to start the engine, you feel as if you're sitting in a buss, with matching vibrations and the occasional SWooooShhh from the pneumatics. Son the engine was warm enough and we taxied out for takoff.
Taxiing is NOT easy in this aircraft, as thenosewheel is free castoring and steering is via differential breaks. the breaks however are acticated with a stick mounted lever and the side which is breaking is controlled by a shuttle valve that is connected to the rudder pedals. This makes the whole thing very tricky as this system is not able to proportinaly break, you can only break, release, break, realease in short order the get the wanted result. Kind of like taxiing a tail dragger.
Out on the runway we mad the run-up checks of the engine in normal maner, magnetos, carb heat. Funny is that all the instruments are metric, which means the manifold pressure is in 10th of Bar -> which means that maximum pressure at sea level on a standard day is about 100 dBar, also the RPM gage is not marked with RPM values but rather in % of the max RPM. So takoff setting on a standard day is 100 dBar 100% RPM .. easy isn't it.
Soon we were ready and applied power for takoff...
Acceleration was excellent and soon we were airborn.
GEAR UP, power back to 80 / 80 for a moderate climb that keeps the people living around happy still yielded a 15° climb angle.
At this time i took over the controls.
it's hard to describe.. it's an almost electric feeling, The aircraft respons without the slightest hesitation to minimal stick inputs. Control ballance is excellent, stick forces are very light, especially for roll.
We got up to altitude in no time and began to play around a bit. Slow rolls, barrel rolls, loops, cuban eights, hammerhead stalls and spins. Throughout the speed envelope the controls stay very light. She's not exactly built for speed but with power on accelerates happly when you her nose down a bit. Energy retention is rather poor for an aerobatic plane, because of it's size.
Slow speed characteristics are very doctile and stall breaks at about 110 Km/h with power off. There is a left wing drop but not too bad .. Spin's are a delight, nice rotation and very stable. Recovery is standard and about 1/2 turn is required to stop rotation (we only did 2 turns and it's said that if you do more it will take longer to recover).
All too soon we returned back to the field to land.
We flew into the pattern with 60/60 and then bleed of speed to drop the gear on downwind at 200 KM/h which is also max flap extension speed. Then you continiue on at 170 Km/h untill short finals. Speed stability was very good and it took no effort to keep the spped nailed.
Flaps down on finals give you a steep enough descent that you can see the runway from the rear cockpit, but on short finals i gave over the controls to Michael for landing...
It was a GREAT experience!
------------------
Phillip
"Duckwing6" Artweger
Flight Officer "E" Flight
Skeleton Crew[This message has been edited by Duckwing6 (edited 04-29-2000).]
[This message has been edited by Duckwing6 (edited 05-08-2000).]
