The old man An-2 will not wait for a replacement soon
The domestic aviation industry has another resounding victory: the LMS-901 Baikal light multipurpose aircraft, presented with pomp at the MAKS-2021 air show, made its first flight. This was announced by the Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov. Everything seems to be fine, another budget tranche is closed – the money has been allocated, the plane has flown, everyone is happy. But there is no sense for the Russian small aircraft from the new victory.
It has long been said by many experts that it is pointless to develop a new aircraft of local airlines based on the dimensions of the An-2, the aircraft is over-sized. It is designed for 12 passengers, whereas according to modern standards, a single-engine aircraft can carry no more than nine. But creating a fundamentally new aircraft is the lot of specialists. And they were created and lifted into the sky by enthusiasts, but not a single project, even those that successfully worked in our law enforcement agencies and were implemented to foreign customers, received state support. And those who have been awarded such an honor cannot break away from the classic cornhusker in any way, because work on this kind of machines is also available to amateurs. There is a fuselage, a wing, the profile of which was developed at TsAGI in the early 90s for the SM-92 aircraft, has also proven itself for a long time on experimental small aircraft of different designers ... Engine? There is an H80 produced by General Electric of Czech design – similar ones are put on the L-410, assembled at UZGA. Since Baikal was also made there, there were no problems. Price? Under a million dollars, but it is promised for the Klimovsky VK-800 series, it will be cheaper. But it is unlikely to be. According to sources competent in this matter, the domestic engine is being created by copying the same imported analog that has already been installed on Baikal, but the prospects for the birth of a real sample are very vague.
Half an hour over the Aramil airfield in Yekaterinburg is, of course, an achievement for the designers of the "new" machine. But for the Russian aviation industry– this is another evidence that the industry is not in good health at all.
Arseniy Grishin
The newspaper "Military-Industrial Courier", published in issue No. 4 (917) for February 1, 2022
