- Talk about plane makers,
we all know about Boeing, Airbus.
But do you know about Antonov?
Antonov made over 22,000 aeroplanes .
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
Apart from making the world's biggest aeroplane,
Antonov is actually famous of making a lots
of propeller aeroplanes .
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Every Antonov prop planes has unique engine sound
from the propeller.
(propeller engine hums)
In this video, we're going to go through
some of the weird looking
and less well-known props Antonov made,
which I personally travelled on.
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All goes back to the first Antonov,
the Antonov 2, which is designed by the founder,
Oleg Antonov.
"The Antonov two is my biggest success.
"It was constructed in our peculiar conditions
"which doesn't exist everywhere".
- [Charles] The AN-two, is really a unique machine.
It's more like a tractor with wings, lots of wings.
In fact, so effective is that bi-plane configuration,
that if the engine stops,
the technique is to pull the stick back all the way
and just hold onto it.
As the aeroplane slows down through 45 miles an hour,
the mechanical slats on the leading edge of the wings
deploy on their own due to the aerodynamic loads
and the plane will come down at the speed of a parachute.
As long as there's flat ground beneath you,
you're going to be just fine.
- I personally flown the AN-two,
it were travelling at very low speed, about 110 km/h,
but personally I love it.
It reminded me how much I love aviation
looking out that window,
enjoy that beautiful romantic view outside.
(plane engine roaring)
Out of all the Antonov props,
I think my favourite is the An-22 Antei
which I flew in September last year.
It was a dream came true.
The An-22 is the world's first wide body aircraft
and up to today, it's still the world's biggest
turboprop powered aeroplane.
If you listen to the An-22
the contra rotating propeller, the sound is just unique.
There's nothing like it,
that drooning sound when it come to approach, amazing.
(roaring engine)
(speaking in a foreign language)
(aeroplane engine roaring)
The An-22 also holds a Guinness World Record,
with maximum payloads of 250 tonnes.
It is the only wide body freighter that is capable
to land on unpaved airfield,
look at this video of a landing in Africa.
The next interesting Antonov plane is Antonov 38,
which is the little bi-tail aeroplane
with good STOL performance,
STOL means short takeoff and landing performance.
Back in 2017, I'm in a trip to Siberia in Russia.
We made it to an airfield called Polyarny in Udachny,
we chartered Alrosa An-38
which is the literally the only one
An-38 flying in the world.
We chartered a plane and a whole group of
aviation enthusiasts, flew from to Udachny to Mirny.
both Polyany, Udachny and Mirny are diamond mining towns.
There you go.
That's why you saw there's the shiny diamond
on the blue tail of Alrosa An-38.
The An-38 is a funny looking aeroplane.
Not only with the bi tail, but from inside
it looks like a shoe box.
It feels like you're on the bus.
(speaking in foreign language)
- The engine sound was also very unique on the An-38.
Listen out to the engine sound on, take off and landing.
(aeroplane engine roaring)
Before we landed at Marnie,
there's a huge diamond mine on the left side.
(aeroplane engine roaring)
Let's give a round of applause to the captain here.
(passengers applauding)
- My friend, welcome to Marnie, temperature 29.
- Now seeing all the cockpit footage,
you might actually have a question
why all the Antonov cockpits are green colour.
- (speaking in foreign language)
- Our next flying adventure series on the An-28,
which is actually a predecessor of An-38,
the same STOL capable aeroplane with bi tail,
but much smaller in the fuselage.
It was not easy to fly on An-28,
among a group of aviation enthusiast,
we found out Siberia lights, aviation SiLA operate a couple
of An-28 out of the air coast.
So we rocked up there to the ticket calendar
asked the ticket seller, hey, wanted to buy the ticket
on the An-28.
I had no idea the destination.
It was something like Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky,
which in English translations, iron mountain town
on river Ilimsky.
So it's 500 kilometres North of Irkutsk in the woods
by the plane.
It was about an hour and a half,
but if you want to drive it's 13 hours by road,
At the first row of the plane
you can sit directly behind a pilot and watch them
how they fly on the An-28.
We had a pretty rough whether ,like poor visibility
but I have to say the plane was pretty steady.
That fair the weather very well .
What impressed me the most is the short take
off performance out of Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky.
Check out the video takeoff.
(aeroplane engine roaring)
- And you might have a question
why there's a phone call in the cockpit
every time when the plane is about to land
you hear the bell rings.
(bell ringing)
(speaking foreign language)
Our next ride on Antonov is Antonov 140.
Now this is not a successful aeroplane,
it is involved in five crushes and four of them are fatal
and there was only one left
in the world of flying with Modish airline in Ukraine.
- The An-140 is an interesting plane
because it was conceived and launched when you Ukraine
and the entire post-soviet block was struggling to
find its feet.
And for various reasons, unrelated
to the merits of the aircraft
it was not able to find a wide market, unlike the An-24
which it was intended to replace.
The engines especially when not ideal,
as the claim of turboprop that was used
is in fact a helicopter engine
most famously used on the mulate
despite all this 35 were built
including 14 built under licence in Iran.
We flew it from south of Assia Ukraine to Minsk
in Belarus.
And we only found out that the night before we're displaying
as rotate on two, and then we had to quickly buy the ticket.
And that's how you chase a real aeroplane.
You just got to be flexible and be open-minded
and you don't know where you will be going
but you just followed that plane.
During our flight, we had a low pressure weather
system and our flight was cruising around 24,000 feet
and still could not get clear about the weather.
So it was a bit bumpy and then filled the skin
of the play wide braise quite a bit as well.
Well, I'm glad I at least flown that plane.
It was a different experience.
(aeroplane engine roaring)
- Antonov are some of the most rugged planes ever built
proven not only by flying into some very primitive
airstrips, but also because of the age of some of the oldest
Antonovs out there still pay the bills.
After half a century of flying.
All Antonov planes seem to have a very honest feeling
about them.
They feel strong, rugged, simple, reliable.
(upbeat music)
(aeroplane engine roaring)
Well, I must say flying on each of the Antonov
I mentioned here is an experience that itself
these planes have great characters, great sound
and foam and rich part of aviation history.