This is what in thought was so cool and so pragmatic and so Russian. In
one of the Su-22's that landed in Pakistan by a defector during the
border war with Pakistan the cockpit had been "upgraded" to handle
precision guided bombs utilizing TV imagery being fed to the "scope"
mounted on the right side of the cockpit. Now the pilot had to guide the
munitions (like our old Bullpup from Vietnam days) into the target as he
drove down the bombing run and of course the most important factor for
his was "where is the ground - or what is his altitude". Now we are not
talking about digital displays or HUD's so the good Sukhoi design team
just conveniently located a second altimeter right their under the TV...
worked real nice.

Now the Su-22 was a swing wing jet - old question on the thread - which
way did the manual wing sweep work - (1) the bomber way - wings back,
lever back as in F-111, MiG-23/27, Mirage G, or (2) the fighter way -
wing lever forward to put wings back to match adding power with throttle
as with F-14 and B-1.

The Su-22 did neither - it was a lock set, but the lever back moved the
wings back. Yet it still has the best "feel" of all the Russian jets -
more like a Phantom and shares the strong rudders


wrote in message
oups.com...
On 26 Kwi, 06:15, "Flashnews" wrote:
Of all the attack birds the Su-22 Fitter H/G da da seems to have
become
the THUD of the east and is still liked by pilots in former Communist
countries such as Poland that actually upgraded them. It had lots of
power, carries a lot, stable as hell in bombing, adapts to all kinds
of
junk, handles well and maintains good. Not a digital cockpit but it
was
one of the best before the MiG-29 came out.

Thanks for your kind words on our hardware. Actually, what Polish Air
Forces still fly is Su-22M4 Fitter K. The aircraft is like a dragster
lorry, needs quite a lot of space to make a turn, but indeed, can
carry quite a lot. Some Japanese visitors to one of the units back in
the mid-1990's were very surprised to see the only real avionics on
board is... the radar.

The Floggers / Fencers / Fitters and what have you have all been
replaced by the Sukhoi Su-27 family and for a while the MiG-29 had
trouble but now it is steaming ahead.

One more mistake in the manual: among the drawings in the manual I saw
only flat-nose MiG-23BM/MiG-27 version, as if large-nose variants
(e.g.MiG-23MF/ML/MLD) did not exist at all.

Best regards,
Jacek