tain't fridae but that thing is frickin' awesome !!

perfectly grotesque and soviet lookin', and hanging 8 jet engines on the top
front like that ..
now those guys were drinkin' some special vodka or vodka/tequila mix when
they came up with that design !They sure have the perfect knack for making
wierd looking stuff.
Wish I'd thought of it.  Think I'll put use it as a banner on my website. I
like weird stuff.

Ground affect aircraft have never been developed much. Russia has done more
there than any other country believe.  National Geographic once did a whole
story on russian ground effect aircraft .

for those that don't know ..flying in ground effect is just riding on the
top of a cushion of air between the aircraft and the ground or water.
Altiutude is like 10 feet, even less.    Perhaps 20 feet max at high speed
long distance. and that for a huge aircraft.  Smaller ones would 'fly' at
perhaps 5 feet above a flat surface. Not recommended for mountainous regions
!

 But you couldn't change a line on that beast of a machine and make it look
any more perfectly weird/soviet than it already is. They must have had one
fantastic and silly time coming up with that .
 I don't care if it's real even ...it is just so sublimely perfect.
Thanks for posting it !

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Beierl" <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2011 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: A little OT - old soviet passenger van photos.

> >http://cccp-foto.livejournal.com/518865.html#cutid1
>
> Also http://cccp-foto.livejournal.com/519551.html#cutid1
>
> My head hurts.  It's well worth struggling through some of Google's
> translation of these pages (may help to remember that Russian doesn't
> have definite articles like 'a' or 'the').  We think Vanagon
> production numbers are low...how about an allocation for your local
> car company to build six vehicles per year...
>
> My eyes hurt too.  "Home" and "Start" were what they got when they
> tried to look American.  Russian style works much better IMO left to
> its own devices.  Like the ekranoplan wing-in-ground-effect
> machines...http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/aircraft-pictures/Ekranoplanlarge.jpg
> - a fairly grotesque example but even so it has an internal purity.
>
> Yrs,
> d