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ClubTalks | |
              
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Would you like one
of our crew to give a talk about "Big Bird" to your club? See some
of the testimonials below:
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"Many thanks again for last night - it was very memorable - one of the best nights with an enthusiastic speaker! David Paul Hertfordshire Strut"
Reproduced courtesy of the "Scottish Aviation Newsletter" - "Despite the short notice for the first talk of our winter programme, there was a good turnout to hear Bill Leary describe his love-hate relationship with this beast, the largest aircraft that can be flown on a single-engine pilot’s rating. Bill started flying at the tender age of three months (with his father), eventually became an ATC gliding instructor, and after getting his PPL met our own Keith Boardman at Popham. Eventually, in the usual method of hanging around the airfield until someone offers you a ride, Bill managed to do quite a bit of free flying in a locally based Antonov; so when James Black, international aerobatics champion and manager of Avia Special Ltd., called him up and said, ‘We’ve got an Antonov,’ Bill was the obvious person to take it to Hungary for a check flight. Bill calls the Antonov AN-2 ‘one of the most underrated aircraft ever produced.’ It was designed in 1946 and test-flown in 1947; more than 23,000 airframes were built in Russia and Poland, the largest production run of any aircraft in the world, and that’s not counting the copies produced in China. Bill describes it as a ‘five and a half ton aircraft which doesn’t stall.’ (The stall speed is about 26 knots.) It has a range of over 500 miles; it can carry 12 passengers, or 15 parachutists, or 6 stretchers, 1300 kg of spray or 1500 kg of cargo; it can land on floats or skis; it has been to the North Pole and the South Pole; it has sprayed 34 million acres of crops in the Sudan…. The list of its achievements is as impressive as the machine itself. On the down side, the fuel consumption isn’t the most efficient, at 210 litres per hour! The Antonov HA-MKF was built in 1985. James, the owner, put it under a Hungarian registration in order to permit it to operate in the UK. This means that a team of Hungarian engineers, test pilots and representatives from the Hungarian aircraft authority all have to fly over to do its annual but as the entire cost of their flights, room and board amounts to about £2000, it is worth it. Bill gave us some tips for flying the plane.
Tip No. 1: Don’t let your passengers move around. HA-MKF is set up in the 12-seat passenger configuration, a bit like a small commuter plane. Think about the effect of 1800 pounds’ worth of Passenger suddenly crowding at a port window to check out the scenery on that side, or gathering up front to peer into the cockpit and stare at the crazy instrument panel, whose switches are all marked in various foreign languages. As to the switches, Bill commented, ‘The ones we do know are the important ones, and the ones we don’t know we’re too frightened to switch.’ ‘Starting a radial,’ Bill informed us, ‘is a combination of faith, hope, charity, luck and three hands.’
Tip No. 2: Have a lot of hands. There is a fuel pressure pump and a fuel pump and the magneto switches and another lever (whose function your faithful correspondent missed, but hopefully Bill knows what it is) which all have to go on at the same time. Bill’s arms are too short for him to reach one of the pumps, so he has to use one of his feet! ‘When it starts, you get a lot of smoke.’ You get flame, too.
Tip No. 3: ‘Keep the
co-pilot’s window closed.’ One of Bill’s flying buddies actually ended up with
singed hair as a result of starting this machine with the window open.
Tip No. 4: Don’t get stuck with having to spin the propeller. It takes two
people to do this, as we witnessed on the entertaining video that Bill brought
along for us. The video showed a condensed version of start-up, including
refuelling, and filling the 125
litre oil tank from the top of a ladder; in real life it takes about 45 minutes
on the ground to get going. Once the engine is started, don’t even think
about taxiing in a strong crosswind; this huge tail-dragger will fight you every
step of the way, and will probably win. It’s a LOT bigger than you. Bill’s
video also contained some excellent footage of the Antonov in the air, as flown
by its owner, James Black—climbing, turning and soaring with a grace that seems
impossible for such a slow and massive craft".
For those of you who are now itching to fly the
thing yourself, the AN-2 Club is planning to take HA-MKF to the European AN-2
Meeting in Poland in 2007. There will be an opportunity for six AN-2 Club
members to come along. If you are a pilot, you will be able to log any time you
fly as P1 under instruction; the cost is £1250 plus hotels and meals. To join
the Club, or for details about this trip, contact Bill
Leary.
This site was last updated by CRT on 18-Mar-2008