Interview with Jyrki Laukkanen on the MiG-21 

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B. I he ni on b no no p j b ph in no ho b know v if p no

@@TheRickRouss Take it as a compliment.

Nice story, I can relate to that awe when you see them flying. Every summer in 80' as a kid I was spending time in Mostar just across airfield. I was lucky because one of mine family members was in air force ( jrv). Every day I was looking 21's taking of and landing,also Galeb and Orao,all day long. And just on other side of Neretva they were producing Gazelles,oh man the sound of the brand new helicopters was like drug to us kids. When you see 21's in pair taking of in direction of Cvrsnica mountain in sunset....great memories. Also almost every week I was sitting down in cocpits of those planes, hanging around with pilots or sitting up in control tower,was in Solo factory where jet engines were produced for our planes and also production of Rolls Royce's jet engines for GB. Man,those times I will never forget,sadly today there is nothing in Mostar that can even gets close to the former glory. In today's standards Mostar city would be called "Fighter town". All those top engineers,masters of trade,workers,pilots,ground crews,people in Solo factory...great people. Today we're Soko factory was proudly standing is a huge shopping center where people dwell like zombies. Makes me sad.. Svako dobro ✌️

Green Lightning “Utva Pancevo” isti slucaj.

@@megamillionfreak u sta nas budaletine dovedose al' jebaji ga sta cemo . Bar imamo sjecanje na neko lijepo vrijeme. Kad smo imali sve. Svako dobro u zivotu I zivio brate 👊

Green Lightning Hvala, takodje. Ako ste iz Mostara, znajte da sam i sam delom Hercegovac; moja se baba od Brkica iz Konjica udala za dedu, Srbijanca, davne 1938.

Oyes, estupenda historia. Gracias por compartirla.

Glad you enjoyed it :)

would you sing the songbof the skywalking elephant? 🤗😇

The Finns (and other Scandinavian folk) speak so highly of sauna that I am considering building one myself. I have visited sauna on a few occasions in my life but perhaps I didn't experience it fully enough. It sounds as though I am missing out on an important factor life almost!

Sauna, Beer, silence/peace, the view on the saunas porch. Sausages and mates optional. Simple things are the best!

Mikko Pulliainen ; YOU THINK??! I envy him, man...studying these planes a lot I have not flown one. I can imagine you'll hardly top that feeling.

@@MicrophonicFool yeah it's the best! make sure you have got a high enough temperature, preferably over 70°c.. then just get in and enjoy and remember to throw a nice amount of water on the stove. If you want the best of the best build one with a wood-fed stove, meaning you use wood to power the stove. That way you get the smoothest and best "löyly".

A sauna is not terribly difficult to build and likely there is no permit necessary if you keep it small enough. Build a stove underneath a metallic bin that holds all your rocks. Pour the water on the rocks to generate steam and cool it down slightly if it starts to get too hot as there is no temp control

Menkää pojat ilmasota kouluun. Ei mitään glooriaa, vaan raakaa duunia.

Hope you BOTH join NATO . best wishes from WAles UK.

That's a good idea!

Yes please! I hadn't seen this post before I suggested the same just now. This is not as massive request as with other aircraft. It could absolutely happen

Hey just set up a site for that. Boom! I am positive it will gain momentum.

@@robadzso link?

@@bojankotur4613 Hi! I did not set up anything yet, since I only watched this about 12 hours ago for the first time. All I wanted to point out that 'we' - especially people who know this guy or have something to do with Finnish aviation - could just set up a fundraiser site for this. Of course only after discussing and agreeing upon with all parties. I mean the site itself could be set up in no time by ourselves. We don't need to wait for nobody.

really one of those rare lovely channels on youtube mate. are you interested in interviewing my cousin, a transall pilot in the german army? we live close to munic and there is the flugwwerft oberschleissheim. lots of rare planes to touch.

It was actually pretty amazing hearing him say "this was an old friend, my friends in the air force let me fly the plane from the back seat" LOL some classic Finnish komrades!

Constantly outstanding !

Think about it in terms of "planned obsolescence", the exact opposite here.

Cheers

BIS is the best jet interceptor in the world!

In Poland we called them ołówek (pencil)

Archi Dembol It’s “olovka” (pencil) and “olovke” (pencils) in Serbian (Serbo-Croatian).

@@megamillionfreak in Pakistan we call mig 21s a cup of tea

Asif Talpur Why?

Javapa why? The MiG-21 was better.

If you watched the video, that was the plane he wanted to fly but never got to.

@@epatto no chance, Finland never had F-86s and theres no reason to waste money on stuff that belongs to the museum

@@ancientwarrior3482 there are many privately owned F86 in USA .)

No, a CAC sabre, much better than F86

Very well said

Cheers mate!

Made my first comment before finishing watching the interview, Kymi Field is just 1h drive from my home, Ive flown above it with a glider but never visited. Ill have to make the trip and hopefully meet the guy. On top of being a airforce testpilot hes a long Line glider pilot and a true aviation legend.

He also has the world's only remaining Gloster Gauntlet WW2 biplane right there. Just yesterday I noticed a newsflash from Siivet-lehti's Facebook page that Jyrki and his regular ground crew chief have both trained a successor team to take over the Gauntlet's flight operations after Jyrki decides to quit flying the aircraft himself. The article said that the upcoming pilot is Petteri Tarma, a Finnish civilian aerobatic pilot.

Wow, that is great news! It would be a shame to put only flying plane into museum.

Thanks Robert.

Yep, the J-35 Draken was a beast of a plane back in its heyday. Did you know that in 1963 Finland was the first country outside the Soviet Union to receive the MiG-21? The Soviets didn't even sell them to the Warsaw Pact nations back then - it was too top-notch. The reasoning behind this was that they wanted to prevent us from getting the Draken. Well, we bought the Draken in 1972 (including the licence to manufacuture it), so hahaa, the commies' plot didn't quite work out.

@CockOfJustice The eastern block military never was very eager to let them get very many hours, they did not believe in that.

How could they restrict Finns? Also Warszaw Pact Airforces especially Czechoslovaks, East Germans had very thorough theoretical and practical training, with high demands put on them. Mind you that many of them when entering airforce had hundreds of hours on gliders, or single engine propellers since 15 years of age for FREE, under the umbrella of youth organizations which were partial breeds for military. The medicals for airforce were harder than NATO standard also. Now since the nature of west/east boarder - Czechoslovakian and East German forces were in the frontlines of the potential conflict, there was high demand on the operational abilities 24/7 all weather with highest navigational precision. Same goes to ground crews. There were times of shortages, when fuel prices limited pilots flight hours, but in general they were on very high proffessional level, being a serious and formidable adversary to the other side.

@@indyawichofficial1346 How could "they"(Soviets) restrict the Finns? Of course they could not. They could only threaten, which they did. And that was quite severe, as were their attacks during the second world war. That's why Finns bought any Soviet warplanes during the cold was era in the first place. The Soviet influence first limited the Finns' options to buy Western and way after that forced them to buy Soviet. Even now after more than two decades after going all F/A-18 Finland is still to join NATO, while remaining their close partner. This is what happens after a nation is all but annexed. Politics and stuff, mostly left wing cells still have by chance prevented Finland(EU member for quarter of a century now) from going all west. Part of the west they always were, especially after the attempted final extermination more than 80 years ago. They don't hail Putin.

Indian air force might have many pilots with long hours in the MiG-21 from the F-13 to the Bison, they still have them in some frontline squadrons and unfortunately heavy use and age has caused hundreds of crashes and hundreds of pilot deaths

They'll probably still be flying F-86s in some capacity long after the F-15C is a memory. They built close to 10,000 F-86s and they're an order of magnitude much easier to service and maintain than any supersonic plane that followed them! There are several types of planes still flying in private and contractor hands and what a few of them have in common is they've OUTLASTED the planes that were meant to succeed them! I'd say at least half those plane are subsonic types and they do very well as tackle dummies in DACT training, too. It hasn't proven very useful to use supersonic-capable planes in most training exercises. Supersonic planes use fuel quicker and don't have great endurance with afterburner, either. An A-4 has greater endurance than an F-16 or F-5, especially if either of the latter two uses its afterburners. The A-4 Skyhawk outlasted the A-7 and is STILL flying. There are no flying A-7s anywhere in the world now; the survivors are all grounded. The F-86 has outlasted virtually every major supersonic plane that followed it. It's not in frontline, military service anywhere but at least it's flying. There are more operational F-86s than there are F-100s and F-104s put together in all likelihood. All the other Century Fighters are grounded completely, the F-14 is virtually gone (very few operational Iranian F-14s) and the F-4 is likely on its way out, too, within the next 6 years unless Iran manages to hold its surviving F-4s together with another load of baling wire.

He has a master's degree in aerospace engineering. His MSc thesis was 226 pages long and focuses on flight testing sailplanes. He's definitely both a flight test engineer and a test pilot.

He is national treasure.

I have had the privilege to visit this airplane museum Mr. Laukkanen keeps up and listened to his stories. Yeah, the stories he had and the unbelievable amount of technical detail he has stored between his ears... it's been 10 years since I visited it and not a year has gone past that I don't think of that time and the stories he had. He is one of a kind.

there was one in an british hangar too right.

I thought it was a rat.

Just was about to ask same question. :))) Anybody saw that squirrel? :)))

Had to look twice before seeing it 😂 was so concentrated on listening Jyrki the first times I never saw the squirrel

So did I

Cheers Ben.

He has flown 23 different types in the Air Force, but I believe he has mentioned of flying over 150 types in total!

My mistake. That makes it even better!

Not surprising. It seems that every Finnish pilot who's ever flown the Hawk adores it. Such a perfect design.

And there's a reason it's used by so many air forces and adapted for the US Navy.

According to Jyrki's biography / memoir in the late 60's and early 70's his squadron mates used to call him by his nickname "Crazy Laukkanen." That's because he used to skip his annual holidays just to get the opportunity to fly some more and log more hours on the MiG-21. And just as he says here, even the fighter controllers knew this and they just thought that what the heck, let me man fly since he seems to love it.

For the Cold War, they were sitting on a very sharp fence, required by the Soviets to be 'neutral' and to be able to aid the Soviets if they were 'attacked', and subject to Soviet rules along their border, not at all comfortable.

Cheers!

Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

Enjoy :)

Big fan by the way. This is the perfect channel for the aviation nerd!

Thanks. Nothing wrong with being a big avgeek!

I agree. The single seat Mig 21 is about my favourite, but the F 4 is also very, very cool. The lines of the Mig are just awesome and that tail. But the f4 with the exhaust under the fuselage and those angled fins, just wicked. If I had to choose a prop fighter, it might be the Japanese one they called the 'Frank' or perhaps one of the Typhoon or Tempest series with that radiator.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priha

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahr_El-Baqar_primary_school_bombing

Thank you.

That would be amazing huh?