Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: air

I had meant to visit the aviation museum at Kbely airport for many years, and in 2014 I finally got around to it. The photos I'm posting today barely scratch the surface of what I found there, as I took pictures of almost every public exhibit with my cameraphone. However, these are examples of what I took with my Zeiss-Ikon Contina LK, loaded with Kodak Tmax 400. These two fighters are the first in the series, being both Soviet-built MiG-17 jet fighters. They look different because the one on the right has radar, with the distinct bulge in the intake (a very imaginative design), and appears to be two-seat, hence the longer canopy. These were some of the earliest jet fighters used by the Czechslovak air force, other than some Messerschmidt Me-262's built at the end of World War II, some of them by Avia. The Czechoslovak air force also had MiG-15 fighters, but older pilots have told me they were only used as trainers. Of course, the Czechs also built the Aero Delphin, which as an entirely Czech design, and the museum has at least one. However, the Delphin was only a trainer.

The textbook trivia answer as to the first jet airliner, is obviously the DeHavilland D.H. 106 Comet, introduced in 1952 after a 3-year testing period. However, it was initially a disaster, quite literally, as four crashed fatally in only the first two years of operation. Later variants fared better (after the initial losses were traced to a badly-designed fuselage that couldn't deal with both pressurization and high subsonic flight), although in total 26 of 114 Comets were lost, a rate of 22.8%. The second ever jet airliner to be introduced was the Tupolev Tu-104, seen here, and it fared far better. Introduced in 1956, 204 were built, and 32 lost to crashes (37 were lost in total, as 5 were destroyed by terrorists), a loss rate of 15%, if you exclude terrorist attacks. In addition, many Tu-104 crashes were non-fatal, to the point were over a third of passengers survived on average. A particularly notable incident was the first one, in 1958, where the pilot successfully landed with no engines (they had run out of fuel) albeit short of the runway. The reason this Tu-104 is displayed at Kbely, though, has nothing to do with any accident. Instead, it is significant to Czech aviation history because CSA were the only export customer for the Tu-104, thus making them only the third airline in the world (after BOAC and Aeroflot) to operate jet airliners. Another surviving CSA Tu-104 can be seen in a park in Olomouc, where it has been converted to "The Aeroplane Bar."

This Ilyushin Il-14 airliner appears to be ex-air force, but Ceskoslovenske Aerolinie (Czech Airlines, or CSA), were the primary users in Czechoslovakia. The Il-14 was one of a series of improved DC-3 and DC-4 copies developed in Russia during the 1950's, and many survived into the 1980's. Today, while they no longer work for Aeroflot or CSA, they are used by smaller airlines and charter services, especially in Africa, as they can land safely on dirt runways. This applies mostly to 4-engine Il-18's, though, rather than 2-engine Il-14's (the Il-18 was more than simply a DC-4 copy, however, and was by far the most advanced of the series). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-12 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-14 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-18 This is not unlike the fate of the surviving Douglas DC-3's. As historians will note, Ilyushin were not the first Soviet design bureau to copy the DC-3, as the Lisunov Li-2 was an even closer copy produced during World War II. The Kbely museum actually has one that they keep in one of their hangars with other World War II aircraft.

And here's a shot of even worse vandalism, much like you would see in London, or maybe New York circa-1982-89. Now...is that stuff on the ground moss, weeds, or....

Here's a shot of the lovely Cerny Most Metro, at the Cerny Most end of the tubular bridge. In reality, it's not this awful inside the station, just outside. I can't tell what that stuff on the footpath is, but I'm sure you can guess.

Here's a better shot of the tubular bridge for the Metro at Cerny Most. This is one of a few such bridges on Line B. This one runs from Cerny Most to Rajska Zahrada, and the other one runs from Luziny to Hurka. This one is in better condition, although both are heavily vandalised.

In a place as filthy and disgusting as Cerny Most, grafitti, public defecation, litter, and miscellaneous vandalism are inevitable. It seems that these things go on most where people figure the place is so vile that nobody in law enforcement will notice, and come to think of it I've never seen a cop out here (don't count on them not showing up if you're really bad, though). No criminals or cops in this picture, though, just litter, grafitti, and panelaks. Surprisingly, nobody has chosen to take a dump on that roof.

In addition to being Metro connected, even more amazingly Cerny Most has some provisions for pedestrians and cyclists, although not nearly enough. The top of the tubular bridge is reserved for pedestrians, although I don't know if bikes are technically allowed on it. I saw some cyclists on it, though, and in any case the other facilities are so bad you won't see many pedestrians in Cerny Most except in the old Sidliste, so the safety hazard would be minimal.

Cerny Most is so spectacularly repulsive that I thought recently, on another bleak car trip out of Prague, that it is indeed a work of art in revulsion. Gaia Mesiah even have a song about it called "Black Bridge," which isn't any less apocalyptic than their other stuff. The song is called "Black Bridge" because that's literally what "Cerny Most" means. Lovely.... Anyway, it is what it looks like, a chaotic collection of strip malls, freeways, highways, litter, and feces shrouded in air pollution, a product first of Communism (it started as a Sidliste), and then of unrestricted capitalism, meaning American-style sprawl without any regard for the environmental and economic consequences. The only upside is that the building and tubular bridge you see on the left is a Metro station, the eastern terminus of Metro Line B.

I just spotted all of these contrails illuminated by the sunset off to the left of the photo, and liked how they looked. They do serve as a reminder that there is a lot of air traffic coming in and out of Prague, even if it's nowhere near to what you would see in London or New York.