MIG-23 is one of my favourites! And yes, I am a sucker for both that swing-wing construction and for the main gear assembly. Doing that on a model I always wondered: "how the hell did all of that fit into that small place?" but it did! :-)
@@AndresLopez-ve3io sadly, no. I was born too late to pilot them, but I got to watch them on annual flight shows. When they were training, the were flying above my parents house and damn were they loud! But I loved looking at them. They were a simple design and easy to produce. Even by soviet standards. And while they weren't so performant as an F-16, in some areas they came pretty close. And, well, swing wings intrigue me. So F-14, B-1B, F-111, Su-17/21, SU-24 for me have some "engineering marvel" to them.
@@StaK_1980 Excuse me but I did and we told them the "flying coffin" Specially Mig-23 ML If you tell me Mig-21 (specially Mig 21 BIS), yes it is a very good aircraft.
This is my all time favorite plane. Just beautiful and deadly in the right hands. Love it. And for those of you who love this plane there is a 5 lbs book on Amazon called Mig-23-27 Flogger all about this beauty and beast. It's around $65 and 500+ pages on these planes. I'm buying mine sometime this month.
+coldwarair *One possible export upgrade would have been the Mikojan-Gurevich-23bis,* to pack the _Kopjo_ multimode radar in addition to an Arkhip Lyul'ka 31F-M1 afterburning turbofan (replacing the R-29F-300 turbojet); the MiG-23UM would have been its counterpart tactical trainer. The cockpit would integrate the head-up and multifunction displays from the Sukhoi-25 plus the _Kopjo_ control panel into the legacy MiG-23MLD instrumentation and controls. A subsequent _Izdelie_ (MiG-23bisZh) would substitute a Fazotron N-010 backported from the MiG-29/35.
I read in "Jets" magazine that the Soviets actually de-rated the engines of the MiG-23 to make sure that the nations who bought them would be reliable customers. So by the time the engines had to be replaced, they would buy them straight of the Soviet Union and no problem whatsoever. But if your nation fell out with the Soviet Union, tough luck keeping your MiG-23's flying Tobarich. One such nation was Egypt, who had to retire hundreds of MiG-23's when the Soviets didn't agree with them buying the F-4 Phantom. With no replacement engines, their MiG-23's simply couldn't fly anymore.
Also a lot of people wonder what the white line is for just a little off to the right is. The line is for if you get into a spin you push the control stick right against it and it should help you recover from the spin. Apparently Mig-23s could get into spin if you maneuvered wrong but not common.
Very interesting introduction! Especially I like the HD quality. I'd like to suggest that you would use a separate mic as your voice is hard to hear sometimes. Looking forward to new videos.
It would be great if you did a short video on your personal evaluation of Soviet aerospace engineering solutions of the era as someone who is knowledgable. We were told a lot of things about Russian planes in those cold war days, but it would be nice to know the truth. It seems to me they had some very interesting subtle aero details that are downright brilliant.
It was meant to replace the MIG-21 - that went very well. It was a abysmal aircraft - A F-111 pilot said, he didn't think anything could turn worse that the 111. He was wrong.....But it has that USSR "Ugly Beauty" about it that I love
Very interesting - thanks for posting. But "HD quality"? It looks like the original video was severely compressed, being completely blanketed in low-res visual artifacts. Uploaded back in 2009, so... maybe that is why. Such a nice plane, but that makes me a bit sad.... :-(
The same aircraft from video taking off with afterburner... The precise machine in the video -> facebook.com/BulgarianAviation1906infinity/photos/a.1194426723990596/1755534237879839/
it's exactly like the f-4 it even has the net cutters behind it next to the fuselage, the soviets reversed engineered the f-4 intakes. they didn't know what the cutters where for but they put them on anyway.
It is a debunked myth. The gaps between intakes and fuselage are for passing boundary air flow. Rods in gaps also aren't "net cutters". Just connections between intake wedges and fuselage. For structural rigidity. Without them intakes would be ripped of from fuselage. Also they are different in form and place between F-4 and MiG-23. So it's not a "reverse engineered" something. Just similar approach to air dynamics of the time.
@@alexlobanov7549 Yes it is reversed engineered, that's a well established fact and one that the sources in eastern Europe that sell these cite. My friend in Texas bought one of these last year from the same pipeline that this one came from, and they were sharpened on the F4 to be net cutters for Naval service. Just a month or so ago the man who has the only airworthy MIG23 in the US did a walk around on his and he tells the whole story about the intakes being reverse engineered and how the Soviets unnecessarily sharpened the leading edges on those brackets, they are brackets but indeed they were sharpened to cut the nets on the emergency barrier, otherwise it would rip the plane apart right there, this way the net slides down the fuselage and tightens up on the leading edges of the wings.
@@dukecraig2402 just some multi millionaire talking bs to impress the mortals... aerodynamic laws are constant and design parameters follow suit. they are only alike due to having similar flight performance needs but a closer inspection you can see that the mig has different geometry and has holes on it. intakes that have a fence and bracket design can be found on pervious aircraft design. i guess next your going to say the soko j 21/ g-2 galeb are copies of the f4 because they use a bracket intake...
