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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0063.PDF
•WBfflSfi(iIW*»™Mi»W™g»^™l«3MS3iEBMffi •*k 4L «** w*. •SKill PptHi The Tu-144 comes in for a landing, nose-drooped, on a snow-covered runway after its first 38min flight on December 31. With it is the Mikoyan- designed test vehicle, based apparently on the Mig 21, which has a similar ogee wing and was used for earlier stability and other trials, The ground view below shows the Tu-144 with its nose in the raised position. These and the picture on page 44 are the best of the few photographs so far released by the Russians 47 FLIGHT International, 9 January 1969 AIR TRANSPORT ••*•"*' ^\\i. RUSSIA'S SST AIRBORNE THE Tupolev Tu-144 SST made an initial 38min flight on December 31, after a three-day postponement because of bad weather, from an unnamed Moscow airport. The prototype had been assembled and ground tested at the Tupolev plant at Khukovsky, near Moscow. In command on the flight was Eduard Elyan, who had been responsible for flight testing other Tupolev transports. He was accompanied by Mikhail Kozlov as assistant test pilot. Vladimir Benderov as chief engineer and test pilot, and Yuri Semiverstov as flight engineer. The necessarily short initial evaluation and systems-checking flight appears to have been essentially trouble-free. Designed by Alexei Tupolev, the son of the veteran designer Andrei Tupolev, the Tu-144 is a "conventional" fixed-delta- wing aircraft powered by four 38,5801b-thrust (with reheat) Kuznetsov NK-144 turtoofans with 1:1 bypass ratios. A number of British companies are supplying (or believe they may have supplied) equipment for the Tupolev SST. The position is that several have entered into contracts with the Russians through the Aviaexport organisation, but since these contracts are couched in fairly general terms it is not at all clear whether any specific equipment has found its way into the prototype Tu-144 or is allocated for any future pro duction runs. Marconi is very much in this position, having sold more than £1 million-worth of VOR/1LS equipment to the Russian trade organisation. This was stated at the time to have been for installation in current Tupolev and Ilyushin airliners and involved the AD.260 navigation system. The Russians have expressed interest in the more advanced AD.270 follow-up equipment which the company is now offering. One of the first suppliers in the field, English Electric, has produced elec trical generators for the two SST prototypes and Plessey sup plied hot-air valves under a development contract for incor poration in the environmental control unit of the cabin air- conditioning system. Also thought to be on the prototype are Cossor SSR 1600 transponders which were supplied through Aviaexport for earlier airliner types and have been re-exported by the Rus sians in aircraft supplied to countries outside the Soviet Union. Cossor expects that its CRM555 ramp-test equipment is being used to check out the Marconi VOR/ILS sets on the ground.
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