Sukhois fly to thrill, not kill

BENGALURU: Pilots of IAF's meanest fighter -Su-30 -have been in `unfamiliar skies' for the past four days. As hordes of people make their way into the Yelahanka Air Force Station, the Sukhoi team know they are flying to thrill, and not kill. Flying from bases with specific `mission requirements', the crowd is not something this team is used to.
“Focus is important, we never know what the people are doing when we perform those stunts up there.Our role is to fly,“ says Flight Lieutenant Prashant Sharma.
Wing Commander AN Karulkar, the commanding officer, starts briefing them even as the ground crew conducts mandatory tests before the take off. The seriousness is more than just apparent. That's because, as Flight Lieutenant Navjot Singh puts it: “Almost all the manoeuvres we display here are used during operations, in that sense this is what we train to do always.“
Among the most popular stunts they perform are the loop, dumble, yaw, tail slide, rolls and minimum radius turns. “We also do a loop-dumble-yaw, a combination move which is my personal favourite,“ Navjot says while Prashant says: “It has to be the yaw. The Sukhoi is the only fixed winged aircraft in the world that can do it, it has to be the yaw.“ The Su-30 has been performing for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening every day . And when they take to the skies, nine out of 10 visitors on the ground cov er their ears. So, how quiet is it in the cockpit: “One we are constantly hearing instructions from the command and Air Control and two even with the helmets and ear buds we can't keep the engine out of our ears, but that's what lets us know we are safe“ Prashant says.