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Monday, June 28, 2010

Warbird in Pune: MiG-23MF Flogger Aircraft [aka Vijay]

Update: More pictures in the MiG-23 have been posted - Warbird in Pune: MiG-23 MF Flogger Aircraft [Updated]

I first saw the aircraft one evening a couple of years back when I was returning home from college after an exam. It had just been brought at the location and Air Force personals were in the process of placing the aircraft in its current resting place. The sight of this huge, majestic bird sitting on a trailer in the middle of the road was a sight to behold and even as I was driving, I could barely take my eyes off the beauty – much to the distress of my folks when I told them about it [for reasons I’m still trying to figure out].

Travelling by that road, passing by the aircraft each day on way to College and back, became a much looked forward to activity for the day. Even after the much shorter route to the College was re-opened for public conveyance, what with its flyovers and concretized roads, I would often take a detour just to have a glimpse of the aircraft perched on top of its platform, proudly looking over the road – it owns that stretch of the road it is visible from.

From that day onwards, one additional ritual that I started on exam days was to take a detour to pass by the aircraft on way to the College [the other one is to stop or slow down while passing by the Shiva Temple at the Unit Line Peer Baba]. I could swear that, blessed by the Soviet Engineers who built this Engineering marvel as I passed by it, my performance in the exams slightly changed for the better Smile.

In fact, my route to College took me past yet another Warbird – the English Electric Canberra, which is placed within the campus of the AISSMS College of Engineering.

Today, after procrastinating for nearly 6 months, I finally bought a data cable cable to connect Mom’s 6300 with the computer. I had taken these pictures many moons ago [timeline of my activities can often stretch inordinately long, much beyond the expectations of most people].

It is a MiG-23MF that was configured for Air Defence operations. The aircraft has been placed in the Kamalnayan Bajaj Garden situated on the Mumbai-Pune highway around 2 kms from the College of Engineering, Pune with a Shoppers Stop in between.

Click on the Thumbnails to view larger sized photographs

Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune

Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune
Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune
Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune
Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune
Warbird: MiG-23 in Pune  

Will post some more photos & a video clip of the aircraft, including one that shows its tails number [SK 423] clearly, in some time – got to hunt for the memory card its stored in.

Godspeed