has the utka, or duck, russian research ac ever been kitted? that shore is one cool bird.
utka
Jun 16, 2006
5 Replies
The only one that comes to mind is a Unicraft resin kit.
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Unicraft is hard to find. Very limited production. They pop up on eBay once in a while. But, I've ordered them directly from the manufacturer without any problem. Other than a 1 to 2 month waiting list..... I've found them to be completely trustworthy.
BTW. "Utka" means duck in Russian, just as we use "canard", the French word for duck, to refer to a tail-first design. I'm not sure if the term "canard" stuck because a duck's wings are relatively far back on its body in flight or because "canard" also means "joke".
In either case, the Utka, or MiG-8, was a very successful test vehicle built to explore the canard configuration for a jet propelled design that was never built. After the flight testing was concluded, the Utka was used for many years as a MiG company hack.
Greg Reynolds, IPMS
I have read once or twice that the name came from Louis Bleriot. His Ble.25 was an experimental tail-first design to experiment with better control, and he named it the Canard. Subsiquent tail-first designs were refered to as "Canard-types".
The Soviet Lun-class ekranoplan had the NATO reporting name of "Utka". That certainly looks cooler than the MiG-8. In fact it looks like a P6M SeaMaster that doesn't know when to quit...
yes, and apparently all the hot shot test pilots would grab it first to fly around for conferences. i think they're very cool.
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