AN124 ---> AN225?

[Guest]

Hello,the AN125 is a very nice aircraft isn't it?Is it possible to stretch the 124 to build the AN225? Or can the builder of the AN124 build the AN225? Having the biggest Aircraft on the world in FS2004 would be very cool.Cu,Eagle

[michal 44]

>the AN125 is a very nice aircraft isn't it?I personally don't like it. It reminds me too much of soviet lack of technological finesse - build big, heavy, fat because you can't build anything else and if you don't have advanced engines to power the beast - just double number of engines. *:-*Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

[Guest crashing_pilot]

>>the AN125 is a very nice aircraft isn't it?>>I personally don't like it. It reminds me too much of soviet>lack of technological finesse - build big, heavy, fat because>you can't build anything else and if you don't have advanced>engines to power the beast - just double number of engines.>*:-*>>Michael J."lack" of technological Finesse?....you are joking right?they build THE biggest aircraft on earth,and manage to gewt it off the ground...and then it is asked all around the earth to move heavy loads,amongst which are 737 hulls,and parts of the ISS....and you find that the AN225 lacks technology?if i were you i'd go and find some info about the AN225...i think you'll come back from your "lack of technology" statement.regardsTom.

[michal 44]

>>>"lack" of technological Finesse?....you are joking right?no I am not. They can build BIG things but very crude at the same time. Ever seen a soviet aircraft close-by ? With rivets sticking out, leaky engines, not to mention that their electronics simply is 20 years behind. You do need any technological finesse to build aircraft that weighs 500 ton and get it off the ground. If their aircraf were so advanced they would have competitive aircraft industry - in fact nobody is buying russian commercial aircraft these days unless it has western engines and western avionics - and even those sell very seldom.Michael J.

[Guest JoakimE]

Then how come no one else has built anything even remotly as huge as the An-225?Remember that the An-225 could in theory carry an empty 747-400 (if it could fit inside the carg hold, or fit on top...) and still load up much more without passing it's maximum load limit (which is 250 000kg according to http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=389)

[michal 44]

>Then how come no one else has built anything even remotly as>huge as the An-225?>Are you even serious asking such question ?Because no one else needs it or would consider such a product economically viable. Boeing and Airbus could build any plane they possibly conceived but if there is no customer for it - it is a huge waste of money. No private company is in a business of throwing money down the drain.Michael J.

[Guest bjornkeizers]

I for one love the 124 and 225. Beautiful and very useful aircraft. No load is too big or too heavy for a 225. If you need it moved - this'll do it for you. Besides, technology isn't everything. The more you put into it, the more it's likely to break down.

[Guest Vulcho]

To answer the original question.......A 225 is being made by the author of the 125.Go to the Screen Shots forum and search for 225 or something to see more info on it.

[Guest]

They DO lack finesse.They do by raw power what they fail to do by more elaborate means.Noone else built something like the 225 because it's a useless aircraft except for some very specialist purposes and for those alone it's not economically viable (but it WAS viable to the USSR as a show of communist superiority).

[michal 44]

>(but it WAS viable to>the USSR as a show of communist superiority)."size matters" that was a basic a motto of the old Soviet Empire. In order to prove their superiority thay had to have everything heaviest, biggest. In their economy what mattered only was how many tons of steel, cements, bricks, etc they could produce. Quality and whether someone wanted to buy this stuff was of secondary importance. They wanted to have biggest monuments, biggest submarines, etc. And if 40% of population had no running water or access to plumbing at the same time - who cares. I still recall during my youth while growing up in communist Poland how propagnada portrayed the race to the Moon - it was very important to the communists that Soviet rockets were heavier, bigger. When relatively light US Gemini spacecraft in 1965 could perform all sort of in-orbit manouvers (including orbit change and docking) that soviet Voschod spacecraft could not - again, to propaganda what mattered only was that Voschod was much heavier - this is what generated headlines. And this "size" mania really "paid off" - look what remains of Russian aerospace industry today - basically a pile of rubble.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

[Guest wathomas777]

If you ever want to hear about an interesting project, read about how the Soviets basically copied the B29 rivet for rivet.History Channel (or Wings) recently had a special on how Stalin, towards the end of WWII felt it was of primary importance to have a heavy bomber.They took the B-29 and copied it as close to rivet to rivet as they could. The incredible story is here, and elsewhere if you look on Google.http://www.b-29s-over-korea.com/shortstori...ussianclone.htmThis happened near the end of WWII and we had gotten our bomber crews back, so no one was really raising a stink.Then we saw the TU-4 show up during an October Parade. Initially, Western "onlookers" wern't surprised to see a B-29 sillouette in the air because we knew they still were holding on to three of them. So we figured it was one of the three...Then came the second....The third.....About the time Number 4 and 5 came into view the "observers" nearly had a heart attack, and it was then we realized what they had done.Amazing story.

[Guest AV8RFOOL]

wathomas,Interesting story. I love the History channel and Wings stuff! Especially, when it covers aviation related topics. Discovery ran a series called "Airline Story" or something like that a couple years ago. One of the segments was really cool on Bush Flying and showed some in-flight cockpit shots of a B737 landing at Dutch Harbor, Alaska.http://www.flight1.com/imgmain/jsbanner2.jpg

[Guest bjornkeizers]

>look what remains of Russian aerospace industry today - basically a pile of rubbleThe reason the whole space industry is in the crapper is simply because of lack of funding and political failure; not because of any particular technical reason. The reason russian aircraft don't sell well is because people just don't want to fly on them; they're outdated, old, rickety aircraft in the public's opinion. Russians put the first man into space. Russians built the Mir station. Russian ships resupply the ISS.. the only reason Russia isn't a big player right now is because of the lack of funding, but NASA is in that same situation.... think about that.

[Guest]

>And this "size" mania really "paid off" - look what remains of>Russian aerospace industry today - basically a pile of>rubble.or should that be "pile or ruble" :)Yes, the USSR was very big on numbers over quality. Always been that way, probably because they realised full well they couldn't win the quality battle (heck, without smuggled Texas Instruments microchips their nuclear missiles would never be able to fly even today...).In the 1920s or early 1930s they built the largest aircraft ever for no practical reason than to show off.It was comissioned as a flying propaganda show, complete with on-board sound studio and printing presses to supply far-off regions of the USSR with propaganda flyers and play party slogans through loudspeakers slung under the fuselage.

[Guest]

And not just the B-29. They also copied the C-47 and several other aircraft.The Tu-144 is now understood to have been created in large part from technical design documents relating to an earlier concept of Concorde smuggled out of the Aerospatiale offices by a communist sympathiser.This concept had proven non-viable but the USSR didn't realise that and went ahead to build it without elaborate wind-tunnel testing.As a result the aircraft didn't perform anywhere near as expected and was actually dangerous to fly.Rather than redesign the wing (which the British and French could now do with their new advanced computers which the Soviets lacked) they designed the retracting canards on top of the fuselage which helped some but not enough to fail the project.