Mig-17

[The Barbarian]

Kinda crude-looking, up close. It lacks what CNET would call "build quality." They didn't spend any resources on anything that wouldn't make it perform better.

 

[SCraig]

Yeah, they are crude, but part of that crudeness is what made them such an interesting airplane.

The Russians had a situation that was both an advantage and a disadvantage to them in that their maintenance crews at the remote fields were not that knowledgeable. That meant that the designers had to design their airplanes for simple, easy maintenance. The MiG series was designed to fly from relatively crude airfields, by US standards, and also to be easily maintained. Engines, for example, weren't normally repaired on site they were simply pulled out, replaced, and the defective engine shipped back for depot maintenance. They were designed from the get-go to make that easy and painless for relatively untrained maintenance personnel.

Great shot. I think the gritty look works very well for that airplane. Nicely done!

 

[The Barbarian]

F4 Phantom


Note the Lockheed Starfighter in NASA colors. I always thought of that one as an unattractive aircraft. Not an enviable safety record, it was very unforgiving of pilot errors.

The F4 wasn't exactly beautiful, but it was a pretty good design once it was realized that subsonic dogfights and cannon were not obsolete, and they were outfitted accordingly.

 

[Andrew_Bu]

Beauty of aircraft. Real fighting machine!

 

[PMorel]

Now you really got my attention. My passions are aviation and photography. This is what I'm talking about.