Nice plane Gabe! Thank you for nice history. Can't wait to see it fly. Nice rolls. Landing - that vertical stab makes look some what profile of a Malibu.
100% agree. The Yak52TW is a much prettier penned aircraft. The Yak was razor sharp on handling, light on the stick, sounded gnarly, could hang like a helicopter as it slowly lost altitude, was easy to land, got off the ground in half time or less, was cooler to fly as you could open the cockpit, had virtually no adverse yaw, and actually burned about the same amount of fuel. But…after a while I could no longer make excuses for it. Even with the best Yak mechanic in the west coast, it just was always broken or trying to kill me in some way. I’d much rather fly the Yak, but 4 years of constant stress convinced me I would like to try Lycoming power. The PZL has been flawless. I’ll always appreciate and miss the Yak though! Nothin flys like a Yak!
You are correct. It was in competition to be the polish military trainer, but the PZL Orlik Turboprop beat out the M26 Airwolf for the contract. The Orlik is an amazing and highly capable plane. The Airwolf does have ordinance hard points, and two did sell to the Venezuelan military. I’m not a military fetishist, but I do like how overbuilt things intended for military use are, and the 12 year old boy in me still likes camouflage and remembers playing with little plastic army men ;-)
Huge thank you to Gabe! Really cool for him to share his airplane with everyone. And of course thank you Mark and your team for all of the effort to make the video.
The "AE" stands for "aerobatic," and indicates the engine can be flown inverted. My Zlin 242-L has the AEIO-360, which has four cylinders, a smaller displacement and makes 200 HP.
Have to disagree with you. A Prius can't get out of its own way, while this aircraft was designed to train fighter pilots (never went into production) and is VERY capable. Plus, it is a real aircraft you can fly while the Airwolf helicopter was fictional (mocked up Bell 222A).
@@skywagonuniversity5023 Nice that instantly you liked your own comment…. Naming something after a fictional Aircraft that’s a complete opposite category is Lame. No different if he named it “blue thunder”
Lolz. You’ll have to talk to the old managers at Melex USA (the PZL distribution arm in the USA) as to why they chose the name Airwolf. I think they thought using a foreign word like Iskierka would not help sales. Plus….you know what happens when you use the call sign PZL Iskierka over the radio? People say gesundheit!
@@Captndarty Overlooking the rarity and coolness of this aircraft to complain about the name is the real crime here. What would you have named it? We can pass that along to the folks at Mielec.
