Russian Civil Aviation: News #5

By 2030 the PD-8 might should be rather cheaper and also widely used and available engine so re-engining them at that time might make the most sense.

I seem to remember that the French actually offered to the Russians for the Russians to make the hot sections of these engines for Russian planes but also all planes that use these French engines because at the time they were being made in the US and the US were overcharging them.

The offer was made to try to keep the Russians using French engines at the time too.

These articles now claim the hot sections were made in France?

From what I understand the hot section was designed and assembled by Safran in France. But a lot of the parts in the hot section were subcontracted to Precision Castparts, who actually made them, this is a US company owned by Warren Buffet. The deal was Safran would build the hot section and deliver already assembled hot sections to PowerJet in Russia where they would be mated to a UEC Saturn made cold section. PowerJet is a joint venture between UEC Saturn and Safran. This is similar to how CFM works, a joint venture between French Safran and US GE. CFM makes engines for the A320. Except in that case it is Safran which makes the cold section and GE makes the hot section. Each company has full intellectual property rights to the components they design and manufacture.

Precision Castparts has a quasi monopoly on production of certain engine parts in the West. They were asking a lot of money to expand production of certain parts for the SaM146 engine. What Safran proposed back when that happened was subcontracting the production of the engine parts which were made at Precision Castparts to Russian enterprises instead. But Russia decided to fund the development of the PD-8 engine with their own IP thus cutting the French completely out of the deal. After the issues with lack of reliability on the engine due to bad design of the combustion chamber, which was responsibility of the French, I think the Russian side of the business had enough of them.

Manturov is talking about the MC-21-400. This would require the new PD-14M engine.

That is a much larger aircraft. Even larger than MC-21-400. It would carry same amount of passengers as Il-96.

Hopefully this will be more reliable than the engine in the ill fated Il-112. The engine is not forced nearly as much so maybe it will be more reliable.

https://aviation21.ru/v-rossii-nablyudaetsya-ostraya-nexvatka-uts-dlya-podgotovki-pilotov-grazhdanskoj-aviacii/

In Russia, there is an acute shortage of trainers for the training of civil aviation pilots
05/17/2023

Rosaviatsia is initiating the development of a light training aircraft due to the fact that half of the fleet of foreign trainers has been stopped due to difficulties with engine maintenance. Aviation training centers across Russia are in dire need of such machines, Vladimir Izrailev, head of the flight operation department of Rosaviatsia, said at the annual meeting of the Union of Aircraft Manufacturers on April 26, 2023. About it writes newspaper "Vedomosti". With publication got acquainted Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

According to Vladimir Izrailev, today all nine flight schools of the department use foreign-made aircraft for pilot training: Cessna 172, Diamond 40/42, L-410, Bell and Eurocopter light helicopters. Izrailev noted that now about half of these machines are out of order. The problem is the supply of foreign components for these aircraft and helicopters, the situation is especially difficult with engines. “Engines are delivered for a very long time, expensive, and sometimes they are not delivered”, he said.

According to Izrailev, he does not see any solution now, but if it is not found, then soon there will simply be no one to fly on the main aircraft that the Russian industry is developing to replace Western-made airliners. He said that the Federal Air Transport Agency sent a proposal to the Ministry of Industry and Trade to create a Russian aircraft with the characteristics necessary for training.

In turn, Andrey Boginsky, Deputy General Director of UAC, who also participated in the meeting, recalled that the Federal Air Transport Agency had not purchased new equipment for several years due to lack of funds. At the same time, the KLA recently developed a light six-seat single-engine aircraft Yak-118, a modification of the Soviet Yak-18T. Boginsky indicated that the company was ready to begin development of the aircraft if resources were found for it.

The representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the development of the Yak-118 is at an early stage, the project was not sent to the department. If this happens, funding will be considered when forming the budget.

In our country, after the 90s, there were no attempts to create a similar aircraft for aviation schools. At the same time, on May 17, 1994, first flight light multi-purpose aircraft Il-103. Lifted the car into the sky test pilot OKB im. S.V. Ilyushin Igor Gudkov.

The start of work on the creation of an aircraft of an uncharacteristic dimension for the Ilyushin company was given in 1988, when a notice of a competition for the creation of an initial training aircraft was printed in the Wings of the Motherland magazine. In the shortest possible time, an initiative group of young employees of the Design Bureau prepared a project that passed the initial selection. Subsequently, it was optimized for the appearance of the future Il-103. The aircraft was equipped with an I0-360ES engine manufactured by the American Teledyne Continental Motors.

As a training aircraft, the Il-103 was never widely used, a little less than 70 aircraft were produced, which is a lot for Russian aircraft, created in difficult years for our aircraft industry, but not enough for equipment of this dimension. "ILs" were supplied to customers in Russia, exported to the Republic of Belarus, Peru, Myanmar, South Korea. IL-103 made a huge contribution to the development of certification procedures and type certificate validation. Initial certification was carried out by the Aviation Register of the Interstate Aviation Committee, which issued an approval document on February 15, 1996. And in 1998, approval was received from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Hopefully this will be more reliable than the engine in the ill fated Il-112. The engine is not forced nearly as much so maybe it will be more reliable.

You test to find faults and problems.... the faulty tail structure of the F-111 remained until it was used in Vietnam in real combat where it cost several crews their lives.

You don't test reliability of engines in test flights, reliability is determined over years of ground and air testing.

And oh... there is a shortage of training aircraft... what a shock... who would have thought buying foreign aircraft from naturally hostile countries could possibly have backfired... but somehow now it is the Russian aviation industry that is at fault.

Interesting they list the L-410 as a plane that has supply problems when their new light planes are based on them...

They use Western engines. The L-410 uses a Czech engine.

The Soviet Union delegated small aircraft to Warsaw Pact nations. So as a result Russia right now has a lack of component base and working aircraft in this area.

The VK-800 engine is supposed to have similar performance. Whenever it enters production.

My point is that you test things to find problems and design flaws so finding a problem with the engine during testing is cheaper and easier to fix than putting the aircraft in serial production and the problems only start becoming apparent when you start losing aircraft and aircrews in operational use.

Obviously a tragedy that they lost a test crew because they are highly trained and experienced and more likely to find faults and survive to have them fixed than your average air crew and crash investigation team.

Claiming it was a problem with the engine is unreasonable, even more so to suggest a different engine be used because of this... which engine has never failed through testing and development?

The Soviet Union delegated small aircraft to Warsaw Pact nations. So as a result Russia right now has a lack of component base and working aircraft in this area.

I understand that but by about 2007-2008 it was pretty clear the west didn't want to be friends so they should not have been buying foreign aircraft, or should have been buying them in tiny batches to get up to speed on their design and operation.

The west essentially raped Russia during the 1990s... what chance of a friendship was really possible... and it was pretty clear that eastern europe and former soviet states were being fluffed the same way Japan and West Germany were after WWII... it was obvious there was going to be a cold war round 2.

Hollywood made it clear... Russians went from being scary and drunk but incompetent to just being drunk and incompetent...

The VK-800 engine is supposed to have similar performance. Whenever it enters production.

The engine they are using is related to the engine used in helicopters so spare parts are everywhere and widely available and it is a good reliable engine when the installation is right. It had two fire extinguishers and they were both pointed at the engine.... should have had 6.

Like testing a racing car with the wheel brakes removed and replaced with a log of wood you throw under the wheel to stop.

Of course some issues will still remain for the already existing aircrafts as it is not convenient or practical to replace foreign components in already built aircrafts.

I would say it was a high priority to replace foreign components in existing types as quickly as possible.

As far as a training aircrafts in UZGA Austrian DA-40 (single engine) and DA-42( twin engine) were build since 2013 under licence. I know that already in 2021 they started to produce the fuselage independently, but I do not know what is the status now after the military operation in country 404.

An important part of planning and management is knowing when to change plans.

Austria has not been the most anti Russian country in the block but the most anti Russian countries in Europe will do everything they can to destroy all ties with Russia, so why try to keep holding on to them in the hope they don't try to strangle you with them?

Again, the main problem there was the fact that Russia did not produce engines for this kind of aircrafts (and this was also one of the facts that delayed the drones development).

Well a factory that built helicopters managed to make the Ansat helicopter on its own... maybe these factories that are building foreign planes can revise the designs and make their own planes loosely based on foreign types with the expertise of local aircraft designers?

As you say having the right engines is the key so while they wait they can design their own light aircraft... there were dozens of Russian designs that were cancelled for lack of money in the 90s and 00s... many of which would be well worth another look... a new focus on aircraft families should lead to the companies and factories making the different planes cooperating so the Baikal single engined plane is not radically different from the twin engined larger aircraft that will be built too... not just make them so they only have the engine type in common.

And for the multiengine trainer, the DA-42 is one of the best in its role (also due to efficiency and cost of operation). I do not know if UZGA could do a fully russianised version of it now.

It is a trainer and Russia is an energy exporter so fuel costs are not critical... it would be better to have a Russian design that uses slightly more fuel and all Russian engines... except the new Russian engines seem to be very good and probably wont be inferior to foreign engine types in terms of efficiency and performance and cost.

Of course Russia could design a twin, maybe based on the il-103, but it takes time.

Yak, Ilyusion, Tupolev, Beriev, and quite a few other aircraft design companies in Russia have been designing aircraft for the last 30 years... many of which were rejected because the Russian government thought they could buy the wests love by buying their shit, and probably a few Russians actually thought western stuff was better...

The things stopping the Russian designs was always engines... well now the engines are coming... and more importantly Russian aircraft designs can meet the needs of Russian operators rather better than western aircraft.

Soviet planes often had a cloak room for heavy coats and pants, while western planes did not.

Meant in larger airfields the aircraft had to roll up to a terminal building and passengers walked through airstairs to the building... on smaller airfield passengers just froze...

P.S. of course this news is only about the L-410, the TVRS-44 Ladoga has nothing to do with Czech Republic or Let aircrafts anymore and will be produced by Russia as planned.

Well hang on a minute... this article you posted says:

We pushed back [the 19-seater production schedule] by two years to do R&D on the airframe. We have everything else, ”Bocharov specified.

So the L-610 is an enlarged L-410 and the TVRS-44 is a Russian replacement for the L-610, then shouldn't they make the replacement for the L-410 based on the TVRS-44 but with engine and components from the Baikal for commonality?

What is going to happen is that the Baikal and TVRS-44 are going to be different because the TVRS-44 is based on the L-610 which is a scaled up L-410, while the Baikal is a new design, but the 19 seat new plane they are developing which now appears to have fixed undercarriage will be a scaled up Baikal instead.

So the Baikal and the new plane will use the VK-800 engine, while the TVRS-44 uses the rather more powerful Helicopter based engine TV7 type with 3,100hp which will also be used on the Il-114 according to the article at the top of this page.

TVS-2DTS used imported Western composites in its novel wing structure and an imported Western turboprop engine.
The VK-1600 is kind of overpowered. The original An-2 had a 1010hp engine. VK-1600 is 1300-1800hp. And right now there is no plan to make a turboprop variant of VK-1600 so that would also have to get funded.

It seemed to have achieved a performance superiority, but the cost was that it costs too much, which is a bit ironic really.

I suspect as composites become normal and widespread and cheaper that the design will become affordable eventually, but the existing customers likely wont be able to wait and will have to look at Baikal as a stopgap.

the thing is that as new engines become available all those aircraft designs put on hold or cancelled because there was no suitable engines will suddenly become an option and hopefully some of the more promising designs will get a chance to shine.

So the L-410 will die and a scaled up Baikal will take its place, but it will live on in the L-610 upgrade that is the TVRS-44.

Hopefully Kret can sell a suite of avionics for light and medium passenger aircraft that could be standardised across all the new aircraft going into serial production.

Now that foreign stuff is hard to get or sanctioned it is a good time to be designing aircraft in Russia... for Russian companies.

TVS-2DTS used imported Western composites in its novel wing structure and an imported Western turboprop engine

The Russians are doing a lot of work with new composite materials and new engines are becoming available... both of which would probably drive down the price of the aircraft which was something like 2 million per aircraft... western engines and composites are never cheap... so Russian replacements make sense anyway.

Seems to me to be really only a good idea if you absolutely have to have an An-2 type aircraft...

Well, the use of imported western composite was due the lack of russian ones, at least at competitive cost.

My understanding is that they didn't develop the composite technology for the MS-21 because it could be bought from overseas, but that when they were forced to make it domestically they could make it cheaper than the foreign companies were prepared to sell it to them for... which means the sanctions made them more independent and saved them some money and I would suggest that adding other light aircraft that can use such composite material would make the existing composite investment more profitable and the more platforms that add composite components the better.

Wasn't there an upgrade of the Yak-40 where they just replaced the wing with a composite wing and dramatically improved its performance... this is an advantage of making things yourself because you can find lots of other applications of the technology that improves performance across the board and the increased application of the technology should make it more affordable.

As far as the engine, if I am not mistaken, the An-3 (an upgraded version of the An-2) was using a 1300 hp engine) and also the similar sized Pilatus PC-12 uses a 1200 hp engine.

I was pretty sure it was an American engine which means it is not much use.

The An-3 was an Antonov project to improve their product.... Russia should be looking to replace it with a Russian designed and made aircraft with Russian parts and materials.

The TVS-2DTs could be upgraded to use all Russian materials and components and we will see what that does to the price and operational costs... which is really what potential customers are interested in.

There have been lots of proposed replacements for the An-2, but they either didn't match the performance or were too expensive to buy or to operate or to fix or all three.

Anyway, I still see both Baikal and the composite An-2 as useful,

I would agree as long as the foreign bits and materials can be eliminated...

Yandex translation:

https://aviation21.ru/rossijskaya-tcas-nachala-ustanavlivatsya-na-samolyoty-ms-21-i-ssj-new/

Russian TCAS began to be installed on MS-21 and SSJ-New aircraft
23.05.2023

The Institute of Aviation Instrumentation "Navigator" began to transfer to the Irkut Corporation the first samples of the Air Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) for the MS-21 and SSJ-New aircraft. About it informs RT with reference to the technical director of Navigator JSC Sergey Chanushkin.

The PSES, which implements the functions of TCAS II, issues recommendations to the crew on how to eliminate a conflict situation in the air. It determines the range, bearing and relative height of surrounding aircraft using interrogations from on-board transponders. When interacting with an aircraft equipped with the TCAS II system, joint coordination of a maneuver is carried out to avoid a collision.

“The system is now being installed on Sukhoi Superjet and MS-21. Four systems have already been shipped to Sukhoi Superjet. Two of them are now installed on aircraft. In August of this year, we are to deliver four SPVS to the MS-21 manufacturer”, Sergey Chanushkin said.

Before flight tests on the liners, the SPVS will be tested at a half-scale test complex for the development and integration of on-board equipment "electronic bird". Such tests are necessary to make sure that the EPSV interfaces with other on-board systems while still on the ground, Chanushkin explained.

According to him, the air collision avoidance system was tested on the L-410 regional aircraft. At the moment, one of the stages of avionics certification is being carried out - the SOI2 audit. By the end of the year, Navigator expects to receive a certificate of validity of components.

Research into collision avoidance systems has been ongoing since at least the 1950s. The American company Collins Aerospace with its development of TCAS is the world monopolist in the SPS market.

https://aviation21.ru/komiaviatrans-prekratit-ekspluataciyu-samolyota-l-410/

Komiaviatrans will stop operating the L-410 aircraft
24.05.2023

In May 23 at a work meeting in the State Council of the Republic of Komi, during which the issues of servicing the population by air transport were discussed, Yury Skripin, General Director of the Komiaviatrans airline, said that the carrier would stop using L-410 turboprop aircraft.

He said that the company managed to improve its financial condition, stabilize its debt burden, and increase revenue. “A significant role in this was played by a subsidy from the regional budget in the amount of 1 billion 800 million rubles, the allocation of which the deputies approved at the end of 2021. In addition, the company is optimizing its staff: reducing administrative staff and recruiting pilots and technical specialists,” said the head of the airline.

According to him, transportation on domestic routes has grown - in 2022, the airline carried 27 thousand passengers on L-410 and An-24 aircraft.

“However, this year the use of the L-410 had to be abandoned due to sanctions and a shortage of spare parts. Komiaviatrans is looking for alternative ways for deliveries, and is also negotiating with the Ural Civil Aviation Plant on the localization of production,” said Yuri Skripin.

He explained that since March 2023, due to the general geopolitical situation and sanctions pressure, the company has not been able to ensure the airworthiness of L-410 aircraft in full, as a result of which flights on these aircraft were first limited, and from April they were actually stopped. For two of the four aircraft, the leasing is almost over, in a month another L-410 will become the property of Komiaviatrans, in a year - the last one.

“We are interested in raising them to the wing, they could provide our intermunicipal transportation in full, except for Vorkuta. We are looking for various options for the L-410, first of all we need money, there are problems with spare parts. Suppliers do not work directly with deliveries from a factory in the Czech Republic, we are trying to find workarounds”, quotes Yuri Skripin IA BNK.

Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Industry of Komi Vladimir Kotov explained in this regard that in the medium term it is planned to use domestically produced aircraft. The republic is also working on the sale of Embraer aircraft, but it is also hampered by sanctions.

In August 2020, Vladimir Uyba, acting head of Komi, said that the Brazilian Embraer ERJ 145s had brought the Komiaviatrans company to ruin, and they would be replaced by domestic An-24s.

According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, the airline currently has one L-410 UVP-E20 aircraft, two An-24RVs, three Mi-8MTV-1 helicopters, and 11 Mi-8Ts in its fleet. The republic acquired the first three L-410 aircraft on lease in 2013, and one more in 2014. The cost of each was $6 million. By 2022, only one aircraft remained airworthy.