Hi all, yesterday my brother gave me a 1:72 hobbycraft kit of the Yak-38 Forger, does anyone have any good ideas for a dio i could make with this, basically my idea was to have it starting to take off from the deck of a russian air craft carrier with ground crew around(if you dont know what the forger is then dont bother answering ) but where they used anywhere else or just on the carriers? cheers

Surprisingly, I found getting ready to do mine was that they saw limited ground attack -!!!-
use in Afghanistan before the Su-25's showed up!! The old Concord Russian Ground Attack volume said it was used there experimentally in 80-81

But since I wanted to use the DML gunpods and anti-shipping missiles, I did mine as a Naval vers.

Someone over at Aircraftresourcecenter.com or Hyperscale probably knows a lot more about that than I do, but it's a thought.

Might make an interesting dio to have it in flight w clusterbombs on the wings -DML air to ground set- banking past a clifftop or rock spire...

Drop me a pm if you have more Q's about the Afghanistan thing.

Mike

Oh ok thanks for that, i think i will have mine one an aircraft carrier, mine is equipt with APHID missles and these pods, im not sure what they are, they have two rows of holes going all the way around the pod and 4 smaller barrels at the end, is that the gunpod? well thanks again, cheers

Sounds like the UB-32-57 rocket pod.

The gunpods are more like fuel drop tanks with a single, UPK 23, or double barrel in the front end. The SPPU-22 as double pivoting barrels.

Have fun.
Mike

Ooooohhh boy, are you in luck or what?

A buddy of mine in college was a photographer on board the USS Virginia in the Med and he often let me look at his lengthy collection of Forger photos from the early 80's. I remember that most of the photos generally showed drop tanks and/or the rocket pods you described (a cluster of protruding tubes at the end of the conical front, with the row of blast holes around the pod body.

Almost all his photos were of the Kiev cruiser/carrier and its air wing, and he said almost every takeoff/landing cycle he ever saw of Forgers was VTOL, not a rolling STOVL run.

MLD has better info on the Afghanistan ops than I, but hope this helps.

#:-)

GREAT !!! thats the rocket pod im talking about, do you have any pics you would be able to send me of what your talking about? cheers