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Ekranoplanes were invented by the Soviet Union engineer Rastislav Alexeev. They were created during Cold War, to serve as fast moving strategic “aircrafts” and were based on Caspian as well as Black Sea. These ekranoplanes could fly only meters off the ground, but had an advantage of flying fast under the radars (up to 550km/h on MD-160), carrying heavy loads as well as missiles. The “Caspian Sea Monster” also went into the history for being able to lift and fly 544 tons of dry weight, which is more weight than the biggest airplane in the world AN-225 can fly with…

“Lun” with 6 anti-ship missiles…

Even though this video is in Russian, it’s still worth watching since it shows you the rare archive videos of these birds in action…

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We’ve already told you about the new “Sukhoi Superjet 100 Regional Jet”. This plane had made it’s first flight in Komsomolks-na_Amure (eastern part of Russia) on May 19th, 2008. Who knows maybe these will be flying all over the world soon, just like the Brazilian Embraer-190, since the starting prices ($27 million) of these two birds are actually similar…

- here is how Superjet was created…

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Recently the news had surfaced that a Swiss pilot Yves Rossy a.k.a. “Fusion Man” had flown over the Alps using his jet powered wing. That’s all nice and everything, especially knowing that back in 1935 a Soviet engineer Mr. Sanfirov had himself designed and then tested his wing while parachuting out of an airplane, except that his wing didn’t cost $285,000 to build…

We’ve already shown you pictures of the 15th Anniversary of “Russian Knights” aviation display team. Here is the video of the “Russian Knights” showing one of their spectacular performances. Below we are also including the video of “VFTC Aerobatics Team” from Moscow who fly using Microsoft Flight Simulator…

P.S. The only sad part here is that the government pay so little money to those one of a kind aces whose job it is to the represent Russian Aviation on a world’s stage, that all of those pilots you’ve seen in the first video, would actually get paid more if they worked for the local Russian airlines…

We have already shown you pictures from a Moscow Aviation Museum at night, now here are pictures from the Aviation museum near Ulyanovsk, Russia. These pictures were taken and sent in to us by a tourist from the Netherlands who had visited the museum. The most notable aircraft on display in that museum, is obviously the Tupolev-144 Supersonic jet, the one that made its first flight 3 months before Concorde…

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Plane Spotting, or Aviation photography has been around for decades. With huge online picture databases, and with more affordable photo gear, it definitely had been on the rise in the past 10 years. Of course Russia with its rich aviation history, also has a lot of aviation enthusiasts, who willingly stand next to airports for hours in attempt to get that perfect shot. Here are two videos about the hobby, first one in English, and second one with the English subtitles.

P.S. Personally I’ve been into aviation my whole life, so as soon as i got the “right camera”, the transition to aviation photography was a very natural process. Even though I’m still an amateur, i still want to share some of my pictures with you. All of these were shot at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. I put these up here as an experiment, if you guys/gals like them I’ll be uploading more pictures from my future trips. Your comments are welcome…

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One guy flew from Almati to Kiev on one Ukrainian carrier, had decided to bring a camera with inside a plane. What he found inside was a plane held together by duck tape…

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Here are very interesting pictures taken from the ultralight trike by a guy who flew in it as a passanger. In Russia one flight costs around 30$, and interestingly enough they land and take off right from the public road!!!

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In honor of the 70th anniversary of the aviation base in Kubinka, Russia. Two elite Russian aviation acrobatic demonsteration groups “The Russian Knights” flying SU-27 and “The Swifts” flying MIG-29, that are based there did a display, enjoy…

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Tupolev Tu-95 is a Russian long range strategic bomber and missile carrier which was build by Soviet Union during the Cold War. Making its first flight in 1952 it’s expected to stay in Russian Air Force service until 2040! Here is a report about it…

March 6th,  2008 was the 95th anniversary since the birthday of the legendary WW2 ace Aleksandr Pokryshkin, we already have a big entry about him here. Now here are couple of pictures of his memorial in his home city of Novosibirsk where citizens laid flowers to his memorial, it’s nice to see that people remember…

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This is the Russia’s Presidential airplane IL96-300, while many have seen the plane itself, the images of the interior are quite rare. Russia had spent $40 million out of the budget to modify the interior of the plane, lets see what they got for their money…
 

 
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This has nothing to do with Russia, but since we got aviation section here, i think it was necessary to post this anyway. What you see here is a Lufthansa Airbus A320 attempting to land in Hamburg during a strong crosswind. During landing a strong wind gust makes the plane clip it’s wing and lose left winglet…
 
 

Major aviation forums are split between blaming the pilots, the weather, or air-traffic controller for allowing the landing - but clearly what matters is that luckily they were able to avoid bigger problems which could definitely happen in that type of an accident… 

Pretty amazing pictures of a Russian aviation museum near Moscow, except that the lights are off this time…

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Tu-134 is a Soviet twin engine airliner that made it’s first flight in 1963. There were 852 of them built and today a number of Tu-134s is still being used by Aeroflot (main Russian carrier) as well as other small Russian airlines. Having flown on one myself, i must say that this airplane is extremely loud and uncomfortable, the last Tu-134 was built in 1984 making the youngest one flying today 24 years old… Here it can be seen landing on a highway in 1974 Eldar Ryazanov’s movie “Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia“.