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Title: Greetings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Post by: Patrick Kinville on January 12, 2018, 05:54:29 PM I'm an aviation enthusiast from the United States, but I am especially interested in Soviet aviation. I lived in Moscow for 3 years, and had the opportunity to visit Monino on several occasions. I'm an avid reader of books on Soviet aviation in both Russian and English, and this forum looks like it will be a great source of information. I currently volunteer at an airplane museum where I help restore a Vultee BT-15 basic trainer from 1943. I've also done some salvage work on a Czech MiG-21MF. I also dabble in scale modelling, but am far from talented. Thanks for letting me join!
Title: Re: Greetings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Post by: Massimo Tessitori on January 12, 2018, 06:02:06 PM Hi Patrick, you're welcome here. Restoring historical planes is a very encomiable activity. A Czech MiG-21 MF... in the USA?
Regards Massimo Title: Re: Greetings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Post by: Patrick Kinville on January 12, 2018, 06:56:50 PM Thank you. The MiG-21MF crashed while landing at an airshow in 2012 (the pilot was unharmed). The owner decided that it was not worth it to restore the aircraft, and it sat in a hanger until several months ago, when he decided to give the Tumansky engine and the cockpit to the museum where I volunteer. The wings and fuselage were to be sent elsewhere. I was involved with removing the engine, fuel tanks, and wings. We are currently working on restoring the cockpit, and the engine is already on display. I would have rather kept the MiG-21 intact and converted it into a full static display, but it was not my decision to make.
We are restoring the BT-15 to flying condition. Title: Re: Greetings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Post by: Massimo Tessitori on January 12, 2018, 08:24:45 PM Hi,
pity for the plane made to pieces. Perhaps there was too few space. There is a cockpit preserved in an Italian museum near Rimini, I think to remember of a MiG-21 UTI. I saw an intact MiG-21 PF in that museum, with surprising Iranian markings and camouflage. Germany was ready to sell ex-DDR MiG-21 to Iran, they were already painted, but political reasons stopped the sale. Regards Massimo Title: Re: Greetings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Post by: learstang on January 23, 2018, 06:52:42 AM Welcome to the site, Patrick! If you have any questions about the Il-2, please let me know. It's something of speciality of mine.
Best Regards, Jason |