Finding the "right" aircraft for me

March 2014  My search for an aircraft to buy began around 2005.

It had been about four years after a Marchetti SF260 that I and a few other pilots flew regularly, became unavailable. A sleek, fast and good looking aircraft, the Marchetti suffered serious damage as a result of a forced landing due to engine failure soon after the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

With the Marchetti out of service, I had reverted to flying Robin 2160s - the aircraft in which I learned aerobatic flying. While a delight to fly, the Robin had its limits for outright speed, vertical performance - and sheer good looks. Also by this time, my CFI (ex-fighter pilot) had given up trying to get me into a Pitts Special.

In the Pitts Special, I saw very little attraction in flying the stubby and pig-ugly (at least to me) biplane. Its poor forward visibility compounded its overall lack of attractiveness to me. Of course, one's choice of aircraft can be quite subjective, since other people swear by the Pitts.

My Marchetti-less induced depression lifted at one point when it seemed like a Yak-52 would be available for hire. Alas, after many months of anticipation, it turned out that the 52 would not materialise. Predictably, my mood slipped back into a mild depression! Weeks turned into months and then into years of flying in the venerable Robin.

Sometime in 2005, I just got it into my head that if I wanted to fly something powerful and sexy, I'd have to buy it for myself. One initial pipe-dream was one of the new build Yak-3Us. Powered by an Allison engine rather than the original Klimov engine, these aircraft were a limited production run manufactured at Yakovlev's Orenberg plant using the original jigs and tooling pulled out of storage!

Why did I look at the exotic Russian Yak-3 rather than a classic western warbird like a Mustang, Spitfire or something similarly attractive? Price of entry into this most purist niche of aviation, of course. I couldn't afford the over A$1.3m ticket price for a Mustang - nice and mouth-watering it was and is to me! And with fuel price rising steadily, the typical 60 gallons/hr cruise fuel consumption of a Merlin engine reminded me that I didn't own an oil refinery.

One beautifully fitted out and maintained Yak-3M based in California was for sale at the time with an asking price of US$425k. A bargain compared to the Mustang. Then reality began to return when I learned the Yak's Allison engine also had a typical 50 gallons/hr cruise fuel consumption. Between looking at a Mustang and a Yak-3, I didn't inherit an oil refinery, so I eventually realised a scaling back of aspirations was in order!

I went to the opposite end of the spectrum by looking at a composite ultra-light class aircraft, the Silence Twister. Powered by a 120hp Jabiru engine, the sleek Spitfire semi-lookalike quickly captured my interest. Although it was broadly in the same performance class as the Robin, it looked a good bit better!

As I investigated this machine more, it did seem quite an attractive poor man's fighter. At around A$50-55k when fully completed and fitted out, the kit built Twister was a good bit cheaper than the Yak-3. But when I made some direct inquiries to the German manufacturer, their silence was deafening!

By around March 2006, I returned to looking at "regular" aircraft - ie non-kit machines. The main reason for my change in focus was driven by the amount of time required to complete a kit-built aircraft. And I had some reservations about how many people would buy an amateur-built aircraft, if I wished to sell it. I doubted that I would do so myself.

As I returned to looking at "regular" non-kit built aircraft, it became apparent to me that former Eastern Bloc birds offered better value for money than their western counterparts. The many proud Yakovlev, Sukhoi and Nanchang owners seemed to confirm my anecdotal impressions.

I flew a Nanchang CJ-6A to get a feel for its handling and performance. Surprisingly to me, even though it was a good bit larger than the Robin and the Marchetti, its general handling was similar to that of a Robin. Control harmony was very good and stick forces light; so there was much to like about the bird. 

In addition, the trailing link undercarriage made landing a smooth straightforward affair. The inward folding flush surface undercarriage looked prettier than the somewhat ugly forward folding protruding version of the Yak-52. But on balance, the Nanchang was only slightly better than a Robin in the vertical. 

So eventually, I narrowed my search to buying a Yak-50; which offered a reasonable balance between financial outlay, performance and warbird looks. In a nutshell, the Yak-50 was to me, an excellent poor man's warbird.

Cloud Surfing

February 2012 Summer in Sydney ended up being cooler and wetter than it has been for perhaps a decade - thanks to a persistent La Nina phenomenon. However, in between lengthy rain periods, I did manage to get a few opportunities to exercise the big bird now and then. On one occasion in mid-February, the weather was particularly attractive for a bit of cloud surfing...

Tracking down the bird's first home

May 2011 How quickly time passes these days. It must be a sign of old age that time seems to accelerate as one gets older. I can still remember how slowly time passed when I was a boy; impatiently waiting for the weekend to roll around so that I could play!

When I began preparatory research on the metal bird DZY, I was never quite able to pin-point the exact location of its first home in the Ukraine. All I had was a place name, Odessa-Lyman, courtesy of a Dutch aviation enthusiast, Marcel de Jong's website. In his entry for Odessa-Lyman 19 September 1996, he had noted a Yak-50 with the serial number 853101 wearing the number 59 in blue.

At that time, my attempts to contact Marcel for the location of the airfield failed (I think the email address on his site was obsolete) and so I was reduced to scanning Google Maps of the Odessa area. I did find a place named Lyman sort of near Odessa but it proved a dead end as I didn't even see the faintest remnants of an airfield around. At that point, I stopped because the exercise was simply one of curiosity rather than necessity.

Fast forward to today.

I was reading an article about the Aral Sea and looked it up using Google Earth. When zooming in to look at some areas, I discovered some people had posted some geo-tagged photos of places around the area. It didn't take me long to wonder if someone by chance, had done the same for DZY's first home. But my old problem was still unsolved - where was it in the first place?

My previous lack of success told me I had to try something better than futile map searches. Using keywords I knew were factual about the bird (DOSAAF Odessa Ukraine), returned about 158,000 results from Google. On the first results page, I found an intriguing reference to a DOSAAF 'outfit' that was located in Odessa-Lyman in the mid-1990s. A kmz data file was referenced to show the location using Google Earth.

When Google Earth displayed Odessa-Lyman, it turned out to be an airfield right next to a town named Naberezhne; about 15km NNE from the city of Odessa. Even more intriguing were the geo-tagged pictures (taken in 2008) for this airfield.

There appeared to be a mixed collection of Mi-2s, An-2s, a Yak-18T and two Yak-50s! One Mi-2, one An-2, one Yak-18T and one Yak-50 appeared to be airworthy. The other Yak-50 was missing its right wing but was supported by jacks. The cockpit, engine and prop were shrouded - all sure signs that it was in service perhaps waiting for some maintenance work on its missing wing.

So was this the same airfield which Marcel visited in September 1996?

Since the Mi-2s and An-2s appeared to have been around for a long time (they hadn't gone very far given they were missing rotor blades or wings) I decided to cross-check the aircraft in the photos against his list to verify the location.

The three best photos from a number documenting aircraft on the airfield were:

Mi-2 marked yellow 29 (USSR) and UR-BSQ (Ukrainian civil registration)
An-2 marked UR-BSK (Ukrainian civil registration)
Mi-2 marked yellow 09 (USSR)

When cross-checked against Marcel's 1996 survey, I was able to verify these derelict birds were indeed on his list!

Hence, I am now certain of the location of DZY's first roost; and it's found here.

While I was elated by finally being able to pin-point DZY's first home, the photos of forlorn An-2s and Mi-2s quietly falling to pieces was a little sad to me.

Even though these are in the end, just machines, somehow these birds assume an almost mystical life-likeness after coming to life with their first flight. Or perhaps it's just me who sees their slow demise as a metaphor for my own mortality!

Video walk around of the beast

March 2010 Two successive weekends of unfavourable flying weather left me with little else to do except record a video walk around of the beast inside the hangar.

Interestingly, although the negligible weight of the iPod Nano made it easy to film, the absence of mass meant there was no damping of the inherent unsteadiness of the handheld camera.

In contrast to digital still and video cameras, the Nano doesn't have an optical image stabilisation feature. If it did, the Nano would have cost me a bit more than it did!

The Nano's native resolution is 640 x 480 pixels. At this size on a PC screen, the image is reasonably sharp. But of course, the quality suffered much degradation once it was uploaded and converted into Flash format to a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels.

Experimenting with a simple video cam

February 2010 Work and life in general, kept me from updating this blog since my last post in April last year. Fortunately, things didn't keep me from flying the beast (and getting my relaxation therapy).

Even before I received DZY, I had thought of getting some sort of video camera to film my flights. There were a number of options including helmet-mounted bullet cameras feeding into very neat and compact mini digital video recorders. However, I haven't quite got around to buying such a system yet.

Recently, I began to experiment with using my little iPod Nano's built-in video camera as a cheap interim solution. The main challenge was working out how to mount such a small flat device on the top of the glare shield and isolating it from most of the engine vibration.

Eventually, I simply used a bit of velcro tape to strap the iPod to an old dishwashing sponge. Then I attached the jury rigged contraption to the top of the glare shield with a small velcro pad.

The contraption stayed mounted throughout the flight, but the following video shows the camera was still affected by vibration. So I'll have to work out better mounting arrangement.

Formation flying

January 2009 For several months, I had been wanting to undergo formation flight training. But a combination of being too busy, poor flying weather and baulking at the proposed 0700 starts from Camden, delayed the training.

But finally, on 18 January, the weather improved and the instructor conducting the training, Niall, agreed to a more reasonable start time in the late morning!

For my first sortie, Steve flew my beast, VH-DZY, while I flew Niall's and Doug's Yak-52 (VH-VHV) with Niall in the back seat.

Although I had done my Yak conversion training in a 52 with Steve, a year had since passed. The 52's cockpit layout is somewhat different to that of a 50. So I had to get re-acquainted with switches and instruments in unfamiliar places.

We adopted a streaming takeoff in which Steve, as the formation leader, took off first; followed by me four seconds later. Then the hard workout started.

With Niall coaching me, I manoeuvered the 52 into line astern, and right/left echelon positions. But not quickly nor closely enough apparently.

For the first half hour or so, the cockpit conversation between Niall and I consisted of him cajoling me with the words, "closer...not close enough...get right in..."

Over that same half an hour, I was muttering, "you want me to do WHAT and then WHAT??" as I marvelled at the tiny spatters of engine oil on the 50's aft fuselage and tail feathers.

Why, I could even see the grease smeared around the tailwheel strut and the smashed insects on the leading edge of the horizontal fins, for heaven's sake!

And while Niall kept pushing the stick towards the 50, to get in closer, I was pushing the stick in exactly the opposite direction in an attempt to avoid scratching the 50's paintwork with the 52's wing tip or propeller!

At some point past the halfway mark in the sortie, Niall had stopped his insane urgings for me to get closer. He may have realised that it was futile for him to try overcoming my instinct for self-preservation (and preservation of my beloved 50).

Or I had finally succumbed to his cajoling to hold a position sufficiently close to conduct an in-flight inspection of every rivet and screw on the 50!

After an hour of a busy workout, I called time and Steve took our formation back for a run and break recovery to Camden.

My T-shirt and flight suit were soaked when I climbed out of the 52.

I must hasten to add that the water was lost through sweating and not from a bladder reacting badly to flying so close to another aircraft!

Last workout for 2008

December 2008 Since late November until today, I hadn't flown the beast as much as I wanted. Owing to either gusty crosswinds, low cloud base or rain, the big bird stayed put in its roost. Yesterday, 29 December, was a case in point.

During my drive from home to Bankstown Airport, the weather seemed good for flying. Then as I strapped in, fired up the engine and switched to the ATIS frequency, I was disappointed to hear that thunderstorms were present to the north and west of Bankstown.

Not wishing to have the metal bird's wings plucked by a cumulo-nimbus storm cell, I shut down the engine and hauled the beast back into its roost.

Today, 30 December, started out mostly cloudless. But wind gusts up to 20 knots were forecast later in the afternoon. So I launched the sortie just before 1300 hrs, expecting to return by about 1400 hours.

Upon arrival over Warragamba Dam, I conducted a short workout before heading off to Mayfield; enroute to The Oaks township. The township is roughly due west of Camden and has a grass airstrip popular with ultralight pilots.

I arrived over The Oaks at 4,500 ft and then proceeded to climb to 7,000 ft while flying a racetrack pattern over some flat ground to the south-west.

This was going to be my first run at conducting fully developed spins in the bird. After completing my pre-aerobatics checks for the second time, I brought the throttle back to idle while holding altitude.

Based on a stall speed of 100 kph, the spin entry speed is 1.1 x Vs = 110 kph. So when the airspeed slowed to 110 kph, I applied full aft stick and full left rudder. After a momentary pause, the big bird rolled and pitched gently into a left spin.

Counting four turns, I relaxed the stick to neutral and applied full right rudder. The autorotation stopped somewhere between a third and half a turn after applying the right rudder. Easing back the stick and opening the throttle, I climbed back to 7,000 ft for a spin to the right.

Spins to the right are in the same direction as the propeller torque. And indeed, entry into a right spin is slightly quicker and exhibited a slightly steeper pitch down angle while spinning. Nonetheless, the entry was again smooth and gentle.

I was pleasantly surprised at the smoothness and gentleness of the spin entries; compared to the Robin and Marchetti, Yakovlev's beast is a mild-mannered pussycat. This isn't to say the Robin and Marchetti had aggressive spin entries. But in relative terms, the 50 is mild-mannered.

After the spins, I headed further west to Nattai. Passing Nattai, I arrived overhead Lake Burragorang at 4,500 ft for another aerobatic workout. Then it was time to head for home via a leisurely cruise up Lake Burragorang and then Warragamba Dam.

Enroute from the dam, I conducted my customary practice forced landing before heading back to Bankstown for an uneventful landing.

Trying to avoid bird strikes

August 2008 Winter this year has been a little less conducive to flying than the same time last year. Over the last few months, I had only managed to exercise the big bird about once every two weeks rather than every week. In most cases when a flight was precluded, the skies were generally clear.

But westerly to south-westerly weather patterns (typical during winter) created strong crosswinds exceeding the Yak-50's capability - or my comfort level. Although I often flew the Alpha/Robin with crosswind components up to 25 knots, I had over 200 hours experience in the tricycle landing gear aircraft. On the other hand, my less than 10 hours familiarity with the tailwheeled beast demanded caution rather than recklessness.

Sunday, 17 August, was one day during which the wind cooperated long enough for me to launch a sortie. Arriving at the hangar early, I dragged the big metal bird out into the brilliant sunlight. Completing the pre-flight inspection, I then proceeded with my pre-flight workout.

For radial-engined aircraft, pulling the propeller through before flight is vital if one wants to avoid hydraulic locks. Hydraulic locks are commonly caused when engine oil that has collected in the bottom cylinders, is not cleared. Since liquids are incompressible, the oil trapped in the combustion chamber acts like a solid block to a moving piston; leading to a bent or snapped connecting rod or complete engine destruction.

When fitted with suitable excess oil drain valves, pulling through a propeller clears any residual oil from the lower cylinders. The workout comes from pulling the propeller through at least six complete revolutions. It is not easy overcoming the natural compression of the nine cylinders.

Eventually, I arrived in the training area and flew the bird through its exercise routine. This time, I decided to use higher power settings of 75% rpm and 80 cm manifold pressure. Vertical performance along with fuel consumption rose accordingly. Rather than use a starting altitude of 4500 ft, I started at 4000 ft to avoid punching through the Sydney CTA lower limit during vertical manoeuvres.

After executing the usual practice forced landing, I pointed the bird for home. Approaching the Prospect Reservoir VFR checkpoint, I spotted two flocks of Ibises closing fast on a reciprocal heading. Bracketing me on the high and low sides, I had little choice but to maintain my altitude and hope they would do the same. Instinctively, I hunched down a little lower and hoped for the best.

The lower flock whipped past below and to the right of my right wing. They probably saw my strobe light and veered away from my flight path. On the other hand, the higher flock whipped past no more than 30 ft above my mid left wing. Fortunately, they did not dive as most birds seem to do instinctively when confronted with danger.

My arrival and recovery to Bankstown was much less eventful. Reflecting on the near miss, it seemed to me that flying a steady course and altitude at relatively low speed (130 knots) gave both flocks time to avoid colliding with the metal bird. Or I could have just been lucky.

How the big bird got its colours

June 2008 Quite a few people have asked me if I designed the bird's paint scheme and why it has the colours it has. The answer will be a little lengthy but interesting to people unfamiliar with WW2 Soviet-era fighters and their designers.

During WW2, the most prolific and famous Soviet fighters were creations of the Yakovlev and Lavochkin Design Bureaus. In the USSR, aircraft design bureaus were named after their chief designer in part to acknowledge their leadership, and in part to differentiate one bureau from another with a name rather than a customary nondescript number.

So for example, Opytnoe Konstructorskoe Byuro 115 (Development & Design Bureau 115), was also semi-officially known as OKB Yakovlev; bearing the surname of the founding chief designer or engineer, Alexander Sergeevich Yakovlev.

Similarly, OKB MiG was named after its co-founders, Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich, OKB Lavochkin was founded by Semyon Lavochkin, OKB Tupolev by Andrei Tupolev, OKB Sukhoi by Pavel Sukhoi and many more.

Since the dark days of WW2, just as the West has seen great consolidation of its aircraft industry with many famous companies closing their doors and switching off the lights, the same has occurred in the former Soviet Bloc.

Only OKB Sukhoi has an active production line for its extremely good Su-27, -30, -33, -35 and -37 combat aircraft. OKB MiG and OKB Yakovlev struggle to remain involved in serial production of frontline combat aircraft.

But I digress.

In the later years of WW2, Yak (common abbreviation) and Lavochkin fighters (principally the Yak-3, Yak-9 and La-7) were mostly painted in two-tone grey (dark grey on light grey) camouflage topside and light blue underside.

Depending on an aviation regiment's practice, additional trim colours adorned the nose and vertical tail of the aircraft. By far the most common trim colour was the obligatory "Communist" red so favoured by the USSR.


So the basic topside and underside camouflage colours of VH-DZY follow standard Soviet patterns in the latter years of WW2. The green nose and tail trim would have been "Communist" red back then.

Aside from red not being a favourite colour of mine, it also fades to black at a distance. I chose a bright green to increase visibility of the Yak-50 at medium range for safety reasons.

Another non-period addition to the paint scheme are the two blue bands around the aft fuselage. These too, were included to improve visibility especially when looking down onto the bird from above.

Against a green or brown background, the blue bands stand out better than the green trim. Without the higher visibility colours, the grey camouflage does indeed make the aircraft difficult to see.

The Soviet red stars on the tail, fuselage and under wing surfaces are authentic for the late WW2 period. A common practice with some WW2-style paint schemes used for other Yaks around the world today, is to paint the stars on the top wing surfaces instead of under wing surfaces, or to paint the stars on both top and under wing surfaces.

While not strictly correct, the stars on the top wing surfaces do add some colour at close range (they are difficult to see further away due to the fade to black effect of red objects). One minor but interesting detail about the red stars is worth highlighting.

Before victory was all but imminent in May 1945, the red star only had a thin white border along all the edges. Presumably, the white was to set off the red star clearly against a camouflage background.

But when victory was imminent, the white border was itself enclosed by a thinner red border along all the edges. So the red-edged red star used for VH-DZY is from the very late war period.

Gliding like a Christmas turkey

May 2008 The last day of autumn, Saturday 31st May, was excellent flying weather; except when climbing up to 4500 ft to begin a workout session, I could see a layer of brownish light smog over the city and along the horizon. Nice!

On this sortie, one thing I wanted to do was use the big Russian attitude indicator to help me obtain the 45 degree inverted downline while flying a half Cuban 8. Competition aerobatic aircraft usually have angle sights mounted on each wingtip to assist pilots obtain the proper upline and downline angles.

But since no self-respecting warbird soils its wingtips with such untidy items, the non-tumbling attitude indicator comes in handy for obtaining the desired pitch angles when flying such manoeuvres. All it took was a quick glance to confirm the big bird was pointing 45 degrees downhill while inverted before stopping the pitch input and then rolling back to the upright wings level position.

I flew a number of consecutive full Cubans and reverse Cubans until I was comfortable using the instrument with its non-conventional (by western standards) reversed sky and ground display.

Next came flying a few Immelmans (roll off the top of a loop). While the Yak-50 manual nominates a 300 kph entry speed and minimum 150 kph at the top of the loop, it doesn't nominate a G loading for the initial pull up into the manoeuvre.

So I started with a 4G pull up and found that the airspeed at the top of the loop before rolling upright wings level was close to the 1G stall speed of 100 kph. The handling was mushy when rolling upright. It seemed clear the 4G pull up didn't deliver a sufficiently fast turn rate in the vertical plane before the bird lost energy at the top of the loop.

During the next attempt, I used a 4.5G pull up and it resulted in a 150 kph airspeed at the top of the loop. Handling was reasonably good when rolling upright wings level. With a 5G pull up, the airspeed at the top of the loop was about 170 kph. Satisfied with my findings, it was time for the main purpose of the sortie - determining suitable wing reference points for use during forced landings.

The previous weekend, I used a row of wing rivets (kept over the desired touchdown point when gliding to short final) between a third and a half wingspan inboard from the wingtip for my last partially successful attempt; which seemed to work until the landing gear was extended.

To compensate for the greatly increased descent rate with the gear down, I chose to start with another row of wing rivets at about half wingspan position. Conveniently, this corresponds to the inboard edge of the aileron. That's right, ailerons on the 50 cover slightly over half the length of each wing. On the Su-31, they span two-thirds of each wing!

Following Noel Kruse's advice, I also added 20 kph to the 150 kph best glide speed to provide better control and higher kinetic energy during the forced landing glide. I was pleased when the new reference row of rivets and higher glide speed resulted in a tight but successful arrival over the selected touchdown point.
t
tGeometrically, the 50 requires a narrower angled cone (compared to other less draggy birds) for a successful forced landing. Put another way, the Lift to Drag ratio of the beast is pretty poor due to the big paddle bladed prop! So the resulting geometry requires a tight spiral glide path to be flown to reach the touchdown point. And it becomes even tighter when a strong headwind is present.

For many years now, it has been standard practice for me to execute at least one practice forced landing during each sortie. With its Christmas turkey glide performance, the Yak-50 demands maintenance of this discipline. Being prepared is definitely better than being sorry.

From lonely storage to renewed life

Yak-50 in flight. Its classic lines echo Alexander Yakovlev's WW2 fighter design heritage.


February 2007 Yak-50 serial number 853101 stored inside Yak UK's hangar in Little Gransden. Registered as G-CBPO, the aircraft had not flown since 2002. Prior to restoration and life in the UK, 853101 had been noted as a derelict aircraft (by an aviation enthusiast) at an airbase in Odessa-Lyman, Ukraine, after serving as 59 Blue with DOSAAF (USSR military flying club). I bought the aircraft from Mark Jefferies (Yak UK), who in turn had bought it from the UK-based owner.


The original cockpit layout was unchanged from the time of manufacture. Note the Russian Baklan 5 VHF radio beneath the switch bank.


April 2007 Out of a dark and dusty hangar and into the light. The Russian registration RA-44476 remained on the aircraft from the time it had previously been on the Russian register. The UK registration G-CBPO had not been painted on - presumably because the owner hadn't bothered to do so.


Note how far the cockpit is set back from the nose; limiting forward visibility while taxiing on the ground. The cockpit position is similar to that of the Spitfire and Corsair.


June 2007 The bird was disassembled for an overhaul and complete repaint in Lithuania.


September 2007 In Lithuania, 853101's wing feathers were removed and the paint stripped for a complete structural inspection and repair as necessary exercise.


Similarly, the bird's fuselage was stripped of equipment and paint. No major structural problems were found during the non-destructive testing and inspection of the airframe.


Some rivets around the undercarriage attachment box were found to be loose and were replaced. A small skin crack was also repaired with a doubler strip as seen in the photo.


The engine was completely disassembled for cleaning, overhaul and repainting. Note the patches of rust on some components. Mark's comment was that it's important for scheduled annual inspections to be performed even though an aircraft may not be flown much.


October 2007 Fuselage in the paint shop with the primer coat applied.


Fuselage after the dark grey on medium grey camouflage pattern was applied.


Then the WW2 era Soviet red star was applied. Other markings were to follow.


Underside view of completed wing feathers with the undercarriage wheel recess visible.


Fuselage with the rest of its markings applied. Note the mechanic inside the cockpit area. He is assembling the various electrical lines, mechanical controls and pneumatic lines leading into the cockpit. Another mechanic is working on the remounted engine.


Repainted tail feathers. All the control surfaces (ailerons, elevators and rudder) were re-covered with Ceconite fabric. Note the hefty flanges and bolts attaching the rear base of the vertical fin to the rear end of the fuselage.


The business end of 853101. A nine cylinder, 10 litre capacity, 360 hp radial engine, the Vedeneyev M-14P and its other 400+ hp versions are popular aerobatic engines of choice today. Note the big brown container mounted on the engine firewall. It's the engine oil tank!

Overhauled and repainted engine with the propeller, spinner and cooling shutters attached.

Twin fuselage fuel tanks located between the engine firewall and cockpit. Total capacity is 127 litres.


Two air bottles, one for normal use and the other for emergency undercarriage extension. The pneumatic system is used for starting the engine and powering the retractable undercarriage.


Undercarriage uplock mechanism. The rectangular reddish block is the microswitch to detect undercarriage position (retracted or extended), while the grey and black cylindrical block is the actuator for releasing the undercarriage uplock.


This is my all time favourite office. Note there is a hole (left of control stick) for one more instrument to be fitted - an air-switch flight hours meter. I changed the cockpit and panel layout by replacing the Baklan radio with a Becker radio and transponder combination in a new housing (below switch bank), adding the flight hours meter, moving the accelerometer (G-meter) from the top of the glare shield (left of the compass) to the right side of the instrument panel (above the primer's oval knob). This cleared the view over the nose.


853101's nose with the top engine cowling attached and the bottom cowling in the foreground.


Yak-50 serial number 853101 out of the workshop and before being shipped to me in Australia.