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A few days ago we were tasked with bringing one of our ‘tail numbers’ down to the ‘Cascade Aerospace’ facilities in Abbotsford for a due maintenance check. After finishing a quick procedure of transferring the plane to a Cascade technician team, two of us, the flight crew - and the only occupants on board of this flight - started to walk our way out of the premises. A hotel transport was already waiting for us outside.. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a short note on a subject of bush flying in Russia, some related terminology, and its etymology.

First of all, in Russia they hardly ever used the term itself - ‘bush flying’. I recently had a fruitful conversation with a gentleman, a researcher from Saint Petersburg (Russia) who works on the field of aviation history. He recalls an occasion when he and his colleagues, while studying some historic publications (among other things the materials covered a topic of early bush flying in North America), have faced with the need to interpret into Russian an array of terms related to a notion of ‘bush flying’ (‘bush pilots’, ‘bush flying’, ‘bush’, etc..) He says they had even launched a dedicated discussion on one of the aviation forums, and eventually come up with a more or less adequate version in Russian. Read the rest of this entry »

Since one ‘memorable Il-76 sighting‘ that took place almost a year ago in Toronto, some more information regarding the situation with the type’s future has trickled through. And some more sightings happened since then as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Among a few interesting  things, noteworthy to mention about ‘Russky Dom’, a Russia’s ‘mission house’ in Vancouver (which was in essence the country’s ‘flag post’ heralding the next Winter Olympics in Sochi), there were the impromptu concerts and performances given by a number of folk dancers and musicians. For example, we had an exquisite pleasure to watch a delightful performance by Dmitry Kalinin’, a well know Russian ‘balalaika master’.

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It was a real delight to receive this news. A friend of mine from Russian city of Samara dropped a line a couple days ago tipping me to check out their web-site where they posted a bunch of photographs showing a progress of one long-run project. Read the rest of this entry »

After a fairly long break I’m about to resume posting on this blog. As always, a focus of these posts would be on topics pertinent to Russian/Soviet aviation, and  its place in the whole of aeronautical world - all of which I should preface with a proper disclaimer - ‘based in my humble opinion’. Various topics concerning a current state of the affairs in modern Russian aviation, as well as some themes related to its past will be regarded.

Your feedback of questions, suggestions would be certainly appreciated.

I’m on Twitter now.

Glad to be with you,

Clashmaker

Cargo planes are quite common view on the ramp of Hamilton airport. Since quite long the place is known for being a hub for cargo operation by many companies. Two leading Canadian cargo specialists CargoJet and Kelowna Flightcraft Air Charters have long domiciled airport for their needs. Both fly 727 freighters. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is some notes on our recent outing to Indus, a privately owned airfield located South-East of Calgary, approximately 12 km from an intersection of Highway 22X (‘Marquis of Lorne Trail’) and Deerfoot. A few days ago when I met Butch in Springbank, among other things he was talking about a ‘new season of recreational flying at Indus’, that apparently began picking up, as the average temperature were on the rise, reflecting a full-blown advance of the spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quick post to sustain the blog’s rolling. Got lucky to get a ‘fun ride’ on the Cougar lately. Here’s Butch sitting on the tractor, and another guys is hooking up a tow-bar to it. The plane is going to be bushed back inside a hangar. Read the rest of this entry »

Uh, seems like these underwater images taken by a very simple, $10-dollar camera turned out not too bad. Or, you would rather call them ’so-so’, but they are not as bad as you might expect from such a ‘low budget solution’. At least, I’ve been able to identify some of the fish captured on it in two days of Hanauma Bay snorkeling. Read the rest of this entry »