MiG 23 Walkaround Tour Russian Airplane

[Music] welcome to the video of the walk around on mig-23 soviet aircraft fighter the mig-23 is very much fast airplane many more than american slow aircrafts this video will know you everything about the mig-23 ever you could like to know this video is sponsored by flying ice air models and john's 360 coordinates mania thanks you for watching these amazing videos i hope you likes and subscribes many times specially by the past modern stuff you like it peace [Music] [Applause] hello my name is dan feiler normally i'm an a6 attack guy but today we're going to be talking about the mig-23 this is the mig-23 ub version the trainer variant of the mig-23 fighter like i said my background is an a6 guy flew in the first golf war 47 missions in the a6 i'm currently uh captain with united on the a320 which is considerably different than this airplane uh first of all i'm not the authority the know-it-all of the mig-23 i just happened to acquire this one a few years ago and recently got checked out so i'll tell you my uh my knowledge uh as we go along all right um first of all it is a classified experimental for exhibition and appreciate the faa giving us a chance to actually bring these airplanes into the country and they slap the experimental category on it so we have a way to actually work within the rules and fly in this airplane in the united states since it's not a certified u.s airplane we'll start out with the landing gear dual nose nose tires interesting uh thing is here's these dimples on the tires they're wear indicators uh the the tire will actually shed some cord during uh during the landings and when these dimples are flush with the rest of tire then it's time to replace the tire these are brand new i just put them on and haven't been flown yet so they're in very good condition and the gear retracts into folds back up into the airplane big hefty gear it will continue our way forward uh angle attack gauge out here in the near the radome um pedo heat pitot tube and this is just a vhf antenna this is a an aftermarket piece that i had uh installed um i have another one towards the back that we were able to hook up with the russian avionics to make that one work small little transponder iff that's an add-on also i'm going going to the front what i was told is this uh cool looking uh instrument here is actually just a like an adf am radio uh antenna and we have one on the back of the airplane that i'll point out as well the nose cone section in the uh in the single seat uh fighter versions uh they do have a radar uh big radar uh in here uh in the two seat variants they this is empty for a weight and balance and they'll get their radar training when they advance to the single seat but uh in all two-seaters there's there's no radar yeah um it it's it's for yaw what the like the tomcats had the the string they just had a piece of yarn on there and and it would it would move with the the slip of the airstream uh so this is uh basically yeah a yaw indicator don't really get yet to see it very well from the cockpit but it's there anyway and then the po2 pedostack tube of course they keep it way out in the front here so it's unobstructed from from the airflow of the uh the rest of the airplane so it's a very pointy nose airplane coming around back side pretty much more the same this is uh an alternate pedostatic tube up here on the right side of the cockpit and coming back into the intakes uh this may look like a very familiar intake story goes it's a direct copy of the f4 phantom the soviets had acquired a phantom somehow and they they knew the performance and it was a mach 2 airplane so they they redesigned this they designed this by reverse engineering even the number of holes i think they're like 1060 holes in here um they're identical to the f4 phantom this is a so when the when the air airflow is coming in here these these ramps are movable when you're going supersonic you don't want supersonic air going into your engine so these ramps will slow the air down so basically it doesn't float blow the flame out of your engine and install the engine so these ramps will move um automatically with the increase in decrease of of the aircraft on the back side if you want to come around and look between the fuselage and this ramp here you'll see these splitter veins very sharp very sharp objects and they were designed to cut the barricade when the aircraft would land aboard an aircraft carrier of course this aircraft never did but the f4 phantom did story goes they reverse engineered it so well they didn't know what they were for they just knew they wanted them exactly like it so when if the phantom was to take a barricade it wants the nose to go through the nylon mesh and this would cut the barricade so it would trap the wing it would cut the let the nose go through but you want the webbing to catch the catch the wings so once again they designed it exactly like the phantom they weren't sure why but they did it anyway so uh split intake for the engine this is just a single engine airplane coming back what they they call these puffer doors i believe they're on the mig-21 also um at uh sitting on the ramp idle power if you don't have a lot of airflow coming through the front of the intake of the airplane so these puffer doors they're not uh they're just free moving they're not hydraulic or spring or anything like that so the engine is is trying to suck in more air it'll actually suck it through the side here um on pre-flight and during um when the engine started guys still have to be wary of getting too close to this because it'll it'll suck some like your hat in or whatever so you have to be careful with that and then during the flight when we got enough airflow coming through the front and intake of the airplane it'll they'll just the airflow will close them off on you and they won't be used in flight all right coming back we have um five weapon stations on uh on this airplane um this would be number two and on the other side number four we also have a weapon station on the middle uh which could also be used for a fuel tank and a little forward here is where the um the gun would mount to be a two barrel two barrel 23 millimeter and i believe it carries about 180 rounds the gun on this airplane had to be taken off and uh disarmed in order to get it through the uh into customs with the atf here in the united states this here once again i'm going to say the story goes because this is this is what i heard um this shape caused our intelligence community a lot of fits they didn't know what it was and they had not acquired an airplane yet so they had only had to guess what this was um it's nothing this was designed to give our intelligence community fits so there's nothing in there it's just a shape it looks cool and uh i think it's a pretty good story so um they may want to call it a uh ecm pod or something like that but uh i haven't opened it up but there's there's nothing in there a little further back another weapon station here for uh the wing this is not the uh movable part of the wing it's just another another hard point as we move back so the wings are in the uh the wings have three main positions uh 16 degrees is uh all the way forward and that's for takeoff and landing and cruising up at altitude the cruising air speed is .8 mach and that's the limitation of the wing forward if you want to go point to point between here in florida you'd be just that's the best the economy probably like in the low 30s 33 000 feet and 0.8 mach if you want to go any faster you're going to burn a little more fuel sweep the wings back you'll burn a lot more fuel keeping up on the step the next major position will be 45 degrees and at 45 degrees you can go up to 2.35 mach and if you want to go even accelerate a little more look a little cooler you can go all the way back to 72. still the speed limitation is 2.35 so you can go up to the the maximum speed of the airplane in 45 or 72. um and then it does carry fuel in the wings and this is a something on my pre-flight checklist and in flight you have to when you want to refuel the wings you have to move this with a screwdriver into the flight position so i marked it so i don't forget and then uh when you refuel you go to refuel and then when you come back to the flight um otherwise the fuel is gonna be trapped in there so first part of my checklist is before i get in the cockpit is make sure that's still in the flight position so i can get the fuel out of the wings otherwise you're just carrying around for the ride it has basically 1100 gallons of fuel 40 4000 liters or so and depending on what you're doing with the airplane you can fly an hour hour and a half with that so it's not it's not a cessna or a citation jet coming back to landing gear it's a whole lot of landing gear that fits into that small hole right there [Music] i don't know who designed it but he was uh very creative with all the hydraulics and i you know i watched it a few times and i still don't know how it gets all this stuff in here it's it's a crazy bunch of gyrations and this will be the uh external part of the fuselage once it all closes up they did use these uh airplanes as soviets were big on using unimproved airfields they would use roads i don't know if they would actually take this off in the grass because it's so heavy but a lot of their airplanes you know they could you know fly them in a in a grass strip uh this airplane is a lot heavier but they could you know take off and land on the highways and there's quite a few videos of them them doing that what's the weight uh weighs about uh 26 000 pounds if you had a light fuel load you could get close to a one to one thruster weight ratio it's uh fifteen thousand pounds uh thrust uh max power twenty three thousand pounds in burner so you're you're close to one to one if you have a a lighter fuel buyer service was distilled water this is uh for my air conditioning system i just get a squeeze bottle put some distilled water in there squeeze it in there and uh it it uses it for for air conditioning a nice nice little cool mist comes out even on a hot texas day so i have to have a little bottle of distilled water here and the tanks just on the inside here this would be the tank for it right here and um just looking at some of the lines uh yellow would be a fuel line uh black or silver could be an airline brown would be for hydraulics and these red stripes are very important i put them on because i think it looked good it goes fast all right i thought it looked good um a little further back this is the servicing unit for the hydraulic system has a main system and a booster system uh one's a inline one's a return line and at the end of the end of the flight there's a pressure built up and you just squeeze the red lever and uh takes the pressure out of the hydraulic system but it has backup both systems are designed to work at the same time for uh they both run for using the flight control surfaces um if there was a uh a failure in one pump the booster pump would take over and it won't it won't run all your systems but it'll get the gear down and you'll have maneuverability so it'll get in your position where you can actually land you won't be fully motion capable but it's just designed to get you out of the combat area and get you back back on the ground safely somewhere around bringing them up at 2 20. you can bring them down at about 2 40 for for takeoff laps and uh four flaps uh i come i usually bring them down about 170. [Music] come over the fence at 150 touchdown definitely no lower than 135 you're shooting for about 140 145 you know for touchdown so it's no faster than the airbus so as we work our way back the uh many different words for these other than just the horizontal fin stabilizers stabilizators but it's just a one piece unit on both sides it doesn't have the hinge on the back like slower airplanes do but this is required for a supersonic flight so you have the big movable surface in the back going up and down i think the brits came up with that system so for for turning the airplane when the wings are at 16 and 45 degrees it uses a combination of flapper ons and stabilizers to turn the airplane but when you go to 72 degrees totally then it just uses the stabilizers themselves and going back going back to the uh yeah this has flapper ons it doesn't have ailerons so it has a leading edge devices and flap rods and flaps in the back so a lot of stuff going on with the wing even though it's moving still has all the other cool control surfaces other things going on back here we've got this retractable tail fin when the gear is up uh this fin will rotate it will pivot at this at this joint here and here and it will come down and it gives you more stability um although you know i guess uh during the flight testing it didn't have enough vertical tail so they uh added add more tail to the bottom um so it's it's just automatic it's a direct mechanical linkage with uh with the gear and when the gear comes uh down this fin will fold up it doesn't give you a whole lot of ground clearance underneath so i found that air braking is not definitely not f-15 style it's a little more mild you don't want to get the nose parked up there too much but this will also come down in an emergency it has a an alternate high pressure blow down function so uh it'll still um fold up when the gear comes down so you don't scrape it in case in case of emergency um has uh four speed brakes pedal speed brakes these are the lower ones and it's got one upper one up uh on top of the fuselage here so they just come out in the aft just on the fuselage by the engine and we're coming back to the tail if you look at the top of the tail you'll see that same adf antenna um and a couple couple notches below that these are just static static discharge wicks and they have them all around the airplane just to take the static electricity out there plans just flying through builds it up coming back to uh just below the the vertical tail is a clamshell door and this is where they have the drag shoot for the airplane since i have to pack the drag chute and it's not that easy my my rule of thumb is if i have 8 000 feet of runway i'm not going to use the drag chute unless it's an emergency it just takes about an hour to pack it and it's a it's pain in the ass so um so normally you would just push a button by the throttle and it would pop this drag chute out it would come out with the air stream i think the limitations about 198 knots on it some guys have deployed it just prior to touchdown or you can play it safe and write a touchdown bring it out a couple things you can do is you can release it from the aircraft on the runway but you just followed the runway or you can tax you off and release it there or if you come up on the power a little bit you will actually inflate the parachute behind you the drag chute and you can air taxi it back problem with that is if you make a tight turn you may take a taxi light out or whatever and then you just bought the county another uh taxiway so what i would do is just uh clear the runway uh get on the tax way drag it uh cut it there and then have somebody out come out and get it pick it up for you um and the problem with uh if you're going to try to air taxi you're up on the power the brakes on this airplane get hot real easy really fast i would say out of uh that seems to be the biggest issue that i've had with the airplane it has these fuse plugs at a certain temperature though they're designed to release the pressure so you don't actually blow the tire but the brakes get very hot on the two seaters they have brake fans on them and they do an okay job but don't always cool the brakes uh like you would uh like you really want um the the soviets in some of the other countries would have a a trough full of water that they would tax you through and cool the brakes down using water seems like an engineer's nightmare that you're putting cold water on hot breaks but this is what they did and it seems to work and i've done it here too i come back and i just get out the garden hoses and and start cooling them down uh they don't crack they looks looks weird but last a long time with steam coming off so um or you can put brake cooling fans i have some portable fans that i put on there too so use the drag chute that'll that'll keep your brakes a little bit cool and if you don't then you gotta you gotta be careful about the hot breaks coming back to the uh bacteria playing the the exhaust is one big tube back here uh deep inside is the the afterburner section with the flame holder and the exhaust nozzle here is actually controlled by uh hydraulically but it's it's using fuel instead of oil hydraulic oil so these these pedals move back and uh back and forth depending on where you put the throttle and this would be actually where this would be the condition of it right now if you had a full afterburner they would open up um spit a 60 foot flame coming out the back uh and then when you come out a burner they'll constrict the rule is you have to on takeoff you have to go to about 324 knots before you come out of burner just in case they don't constrict it gives you enough time to go over and flip the switch and do it manually so you've got about 324 knots to but you'll be slowing down to about 250 knots on a reduced power so it gives you some some time so it's pretty cool that uh i take off in burner and there's no air speed limitation for me when i when i use burner on takeoff here because operational necessity dictates i have to accelerate to 324. i just advise the tower before taking off your speed how fast you gotta get the gear up uh gear comes up about 150. but and then then you bring on flaps like i said about 221 and uh just keep on accelerating to uh to 324 and there's a min burner section a max burner but you can just come out to 100 make sure that the uh you still have your your 100 power um but if if you don't you'll you'll notice air speed decrease pretty quick and then you're just going to have to go down and manually track the nozzles and switch to the cockpit and come around the other side is pretty much all the same as the first side we talked about it does have batteries you can battery start the uh apu but they call it a turbo starter has a intake door and an exhaust door here uh these are down right now because it knows it needs to have have them open right now for uh first start and once the once the turbo starter starts and the engine's running these doors will close um for engine cooling it has these little pucks um and it create little airflow there's you just push them in there's a little spring on them and this is just for uh engine cooling and they're they i think they have on the mig-21 also there's a whole bunch of them we have a single point refueling uh capability here too which is very interesting that it's uh it's capable uh compatible with us single point refueling and as well as the uh electrics the ac and the dc ports are compatible with with us and the the idea was whoever took over whoever could still use the infrastructure to maintain their airplanes so um there's a it's a good idea it's a good idea and that way i don't have to create any adapters but usually i haven't i haven't used the single part of me feeling i do uh over over wing refueling i have uh three fuel tanks uh on top that i usually fill up i can get more fuel in the airplane and know exactly what i put in sometimes with the single point refueling even though it has a gauge here it's not not that reliable so i can tell when i fill up the the top i can see the fuel and i said okay it really has it and it's very important this airplane because it doesn't have a true fuel gauge like we're used to it has a gauge that you tell it how much fuel you think is in the airplane so it doesn't have floats in it and says oh you have this much fuel you know you dial in if i if i totally fuel the airplane i know i have 4 000 liters in it so i put 4000 on the gauge and it subtracts from there and there's a series of lights that tell you oh your your fourth tank is empty your wings are empty so you kind of kind of keep a of of how it's going but it doesn't have a fuel gauge per se and the hydraulic service point port again for the uh the backup hydraulics the main was on the other side servicing for the engine uh fuel filter and oil filter and um turbo starter and we're working our way back to back to the front and this will be the the port for the uh dc power as you civilian guys know it's a it's the same same adapter we'll go check out the cockpit and do a walk around on top all right then so this is the cockpit of the mig 23 ub uh the first first thing that you mentioned the the green um bluish tint to it i guess the soviets had done some research and it says it supposedly has a calming effect on the pilot all is well you're not going to die so when i first got the airplane i had stickers everywhere to say what the switches were some of them were correct some were not but over the last few years i've replaced most of stickers and had things translated in english with the help of my bulgarian friend um so i think i know where everything is now at least it's it's labeled mostly correctly i do have hot seats in these new cartridges so the ejection injection handles here i'm always cognizant of that making sure i don't inadvertently pull them and you would have to squeeze them compress these parts here and then rotate at your elbows and pull them up and control stick it's a hydraulic uh control stick the uh trigger button here if you're firing the uh the guns uh fold it over and pull it and trim switch on the top for your thumb red switches for release releasing bombs and the black switch underneath i believe is for the moving reticle in the uh in the gun sight which i had removed so i could actually see out i don't need the gun sight the handbrake is the russian design it's typical and and this this type of this era airplane is just like i call it a bicycle handbrake and [Music] this aircraft does have nose wheel steering so you don't have to use a differential braking like you do on some other russian airplanes but if you just want to stop straight ahead center the rudder pedals and go ahead and squeeze it uses air pressure to activate the hydraulic brakes there's a gauge over here by your right knee not easy to see but i do have normal air pressure on this needle and then there's a backup air pressure here and if i was to squeeze the brake you would hear the uh the brakes activate using the air pressure sounds like a semi truck yeah um so we can go around the cockpit um back on this side the connections for your g suit and oxygen would be these connections down here also an emergency emergency oxygen bottle if you were to eject um that's what the the red knob is also for the the throttle system on this is a slide it's not around the horn like in typical airplanes us airplanes so to go forward you got to collapse this button right here and then bring the throttle forward you bring it all all the way forward to be a hundred percent if you want to go in an after burner once again you got to click this knob and then it'll go forward to a minimum burner you click it again and you can go all the way to uh maximum burner and that would be all the way forward to come out a burner you can come back to here it's still going to be in min burner until you release the the clicker switch again and then you can come back and it will come back to approach idle and to shut the engine off you have to do a thumb switch here and it brings all the way back to uh to fuel cut off back on here normal engine start uh switch is in the uh up position and then this is a a bank of switches here for um basically uh fail switches and uh you can turn your anti-skate off the emergency nozzle control we talked about uh if the aircraft doesn't come out out of a burner the nozzles don't constrict you can flip the switch down and do that manually emergency engine control if your fuel control unit is not working right and emergency drive hydraulic drive like i said it has two to uh the main system and the booster system if you just wanted to go directly to the booster system you could do that there's an in-flight start switch that uses oxygen it blows some oxygen into the engine and then you can do an air start from there if the engine failed on you we talked about um pulling the drag chute and disconnecting the the drag chute here's the to deploy the drag shoe is this button right here so you'd come back to uh idle on the throttle and then you could just hit this with your with your thumb and it would deploy the drag shoot on you coming up a little closer gear handle and in your indicating lights here we could turn some of those on uh three down and three green so that right now the gear is down and russian and these type airplanes when the gear is up you see three red lights and you're flying around with three red lights all the time when the gear is up it's kind of disconcerting usually red is bad but in this case you'll see the three red lights all the time then it has a speed brake switch and flap switch also has um a fire switch here to dump the fire extinguisher into the engine compartment if necessary this is a uh a lock switch for the for the gear looks like a little boot you flip it up and that way you can bring the gear up and down once you get in flight emergency brake you can't set the brake but you can pull it out and you'll still hear the same air pressure but you have to sit there and hold the brake and like i said it doesn't set uh g meter it uh seven and a half g's is a max jeep when the wings are all the way back to 72 degrees and with the wings are forward it's uh just around four and a half g's has a yaw damper for that angle of attack gauge really good to have that so just have to use caution not to get into the uh into the red zone or use the caution into the yellow zone i did have some avionics just a panel mounted uh handheld but i mounted in the panel gps radios just to make them uh faa compliant gyros same as like the l-39 and then the mig-20 uh mig-21 uh airspeed indicator add a zero for uh knots so that'd be 150 knots 200 knots altimeter pretty standard uh then we got down to the mach meter and you'll see uh mach 2.35 would be way over here uh the gauge goes up a little higher than you should be flying bottom left uh over here that's we talked about the emergency gear extension and that's the handle for that coming over to the old russian clock [Music] needles for like autopilot we have radio a wing position indicator right here says that the wings are all the way back and it also tells you your limitation 2.35 mach and 14 knots would be the corresponding number there's not a whole lot of engine instrument gauges uh the russians are kind of keen on that they just make it very simple you have a high pressure turbine gauge and low pressure turbo gauge in this the number two needle is actually hiding behind it exhaust gas temperature gauge good indication of how well your your engine performance is and this is a fuel gauge that we talked about um so right now i have about 1600 liters of fuel in it and if i filled it up i would just adjust the gauge to 4000 and as the engine would run it would subtract what it thinks it used and you would see the gauge start come down it has a series of lights right here is the fourth tank light that would be the first light that would would come on and there's only a couple hundred gallons in that this light would come on and you look at your gauge and go okay that that seems about right i should have 3 500. then the wing tanks would be the next one to uh to burn out and then you have tank three and tank one in the service tank so you you watch the fuel ladder come down as you're doing it um i have a bunch of idiot lights up here that were recently translated to uh to english um if you hit it straight on you'll see there's uh different lights for uh maximum burner the wings need to be extended i might have tough time to see those but you check all these lights prior to take off and if uh idiot light comes on during flight you break out your checklist and you uh find the appropriate page and you go go for it um back over here is the their form of the circuit breakers and for engine start um you actually to do engine start you turn the battery switch on ac dc generator start inverter turn the service tank on and then you push this button everything comes alive it's pretty much a self-starting airplane once you put the throttle to idle and then uh coming from a little further back they have the uh the circuit breakers under the glass that are set in a a certain position and pretty much the glass is there because there are no touch items and you shouldn't have to um touch those during flight so they keep the keep them guarded with the glass cover um there's emergency canopy jettison here for uh which would be the first part of the ejection um it would be automatic if you ejected or you could just blow the canopy off itself just by moving that lever forward and the normal way for getting in and out is a canopy handle on the left side all right or don't sit in the cockpit that long i flew back here for 15 minutes once and i said i'd never fly back here again but z said hey i don't want anything for the check ride just uh let me fly in the front once i go oh damn it so i guess i guess i'll have to sit back here one more time so welcome [Music] it's like an airport around here all right welcome to the back seat of the uh mig 23 ub trainer variant uh it's also officially called the coffin uh very very poor visibility back here there is uh some a little bit of side glass here and you can see a little bit to the left of pilot's head and not much to the right of pilot's head at all a lot of airplanes uh when they're first manufactured you know they're the signal seats manufactured and the two-seater is kind of like an afterthought uh so they move fuel tanks around because that's a big empty space they throw a cockpit in here so it's not designed to be um really user friendly and it's not so the instructor would sit back here the student would sit in the front the instructor has overriding controls of uh things like gear and brakes and a skid um and basically on this instructor control panel here because of his visibility is so bad and this cockpit does not sit higher than the front cockpit they use a periscope system which will come down it's a located at the top of the canopy so the this mirror rotates forward and on top of the canopy it will rotate up um so it looks it appears that you're looking through this periscope it looks like you're looking right through the guy's head in front of you and it's uh it works really well um but it's it's attached uh um it's limited by by the air speed because it's it's not aerodynamic at all because it comes up moving forward so when the when the gear comes up the periscope has to come down and uh but if you have an automatic then as soon as you drop the gear the periscope comes up so the guy in the backseat can actually see what's going on for for landing otherwise he's just looking out um it may be good as you're coming through the 90 or so but once your roll wings level to forward visibility it's just terrible so a lot of uh it's it's pretty busy back here you have a lot of switches he can induce failures to the guy in the front and introduce a navigation failure he can depressurize the cockpit and see how the the student in the front would work work work the problem still got some of the original russian gauges uh radios back here did fly over eglin air force base and some of these came alive uh which was was pretty cool um yeah but uh i was kind of a little thrilled there but pretty much the same deal as what's in the front just uh any instructor would have to sit here and suck it up for the flight and that's why i don't like being back here [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] you

Channel: ErikJohnston

Views: 622,437

Rating: 4.8546305 out of 5

Keywords: Aviation, Aircraft, Airplane, Flying, Airport, Runway, Taxiway, Hangar, Walkaround, Tour, Pilot, Aviator, Wings, Prop, Propeller, Veteran, Interview, Trent Palmer, Just Plane Silly, Aviation101, Mike Patey, Mark Patey, MiG 23, Mig23, Flogger, FLOGGER, USSR, Russian, Soviet, Fighter

Id: WsHPoQygnVQ

Length: 42min 5sec (2525 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/kengou]

Mig-23 is on progress by Razbam, so you’re in luck!

[u/FirstDagger]

I always thought the splitter vane on the F-4 was for airflow separation?