*** Posted by TIGER ***
Hi Rapier
When it comes to good materials the russians must be excluded.
First of all during the Cold War the russians were designig aircraft without thinking about pilot's safety just because in their mentality of comunists the man must give his life in war. This mentality led the russians into disastrous aircraft catastrophes. Even now I don't think they changed their mentality. If the russians will be a day a state like United States in terms of democratic and economic mentalities I'm sure that their aircraft will be the first in the world.
This is my opinion. If I can help you with some more inf. just let me know.
TIGER (the Su27 pilot)







[Hi,

I think the MIG-29 is more advanced than the F16 (in terms of airframe)because it is younger. Like if you were to design an F1 car you would design it on the lessons learned from the past, but every now and again something new will be designed and it will fly great. I would'nt say that the Russian's are the most advanced in terms of aerodynamics, but they seem to know what they are doing and understand the concept well. I'm sure you will agree that there is still alot to learn in this area with new concepts on Laminar flow dynamics and the rest. We will have to wait till the future to see what new and exiting things come to the forefront.

I dont know what it is but I think there is something missing in the MIG-29 design that I cant put my finger on. When I was looking at the MIG-29's at the Farnborough airshow I noticed people laughing at the 2 MIG-29's sitting on the static display. I was taking photo's at the time and overheard what the people standing next to me were saying. At the time a couple of maintainace crew were covering the canopy's with canopy covers because it was raining. The people were laughing because water was leaking to the inside and causing the canopy to steam up. When I took a look I was amazed to see that water was indeed leaking in and that the second MIG (which was hiding behind the first) was badly beaten up and in some area's the paint was peeling off. I could not believe how badly these planes had been treated and looked after.

Do you think they looked bad because of the quality of the materials used to construct the aircraft was low?

Regards

Rapier



]