Looks like it has a few siblings, so what you're getting is not as exclusive as you might think...

That explains the pictures on the eBay auction appearing to be from different fuselages - they actually are (the two rightmost ones on Google Maps).

EDIT: Hmmm, maybe not. Perhaps it's the same plane in different locations, I can't be sure.

Not convinced that the auction is legit.

By the way, the American version (military aviation graveyard) of this is pretty fun to look around at too:

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.1572109,-110.8374108,4128m/d...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354214

Also I'm wondering if people will give you strange looks exporting a 4-engine military aircraft out of Ukraine these days. That'd certainly be fun to try.

As for tensions, our city is pretty much evenly split up pro-russian/anti-russian. Majority of people I know is anti-russian, but this is probably demographics bias, because older people (who lived half of their life in USSR) are mostly pro-russian. But you won't see many fights here over this. In everyday life when someone mentions they are from one camp and someone from another, we usually just laugh it off and change theme. Some extremists do escalate the conflict, but they're not good people anyway, no matter what side they're taking.

I've witnessed one episode recently when playing at trivia competition with my team. It's split up to pro-russian/anti-russian, just like our city, but we just joke casually about each other and that's it. One of the pro-russian members is a world-class athlete. She took part in world championship on behalf of Ukraine and came to this trivia competition in national athletics team's suit. One of the anti-russian people from other team was shouting to her that she does not deserve to wear this suit, because she's pro-russian and hence anti-ukrainian. But that's just nonsense, because she earned the right to wear this suit more than anyone else in that room. Fortunately, this was one of just few exceptions. So what you read about people in Odessa is true for people in Nikolayev - majority here value respect for each other more than political beliefs.

Evgenuiz;

Are you, or have you news, if bitcoin, or other e-currency, is being used, becoming popular as an alternative to your "...you literally can't spend more than $20 per day from credit card", etc?

It could be that only one is legally for sale.

"Ships worldwide. Excludes: Africa, Central America and Caribbean, Oceania, Southeast Asia, South America, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Yemen, Bermuda, Mexico, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Republic of, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Hungary, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia."

But the seller has an excellent rating, so it's probably legit.

Guessing something got lost in translation. In any case. as aircraft maintenance isn't my area, any idea how viable/costly it is to get airworthy? Could you even get spare parts anymore?

Out of 500 or built ~60 are still in service. Getting parts as a civilian operator might be touchy though. It's probably being sold more as a museum piece.

In terms of doing a restoration Russian stuff is usually pretty viable since mechnically they're fairly straightfoward and rugged, and not much in the way of computers or microelectronics of any kind. Even with all that said, it would probably be a $10M+ (quite possibly +++) to get it airworthy again, and even if you did it would be very expensive. Fuel burn on those things is about 2000 gph, and Jet-A is currently ~$6/gal, so you're looking at $12k/hr just in fuel expenses. Maintenance will probably at least double that hourly figure.

FYI never tell or show anyone you own a jet in storage or it will be likely robbed of flight / nav gear. High security storage is a must.

Is there a story behind this? If it is interesting, can we hear it?

[1] Ironically, we DO have such an agreement with Poland, so in some cases (but not the TU-95), aircraft built in Poland have a path towards approval for US ops that those built elsewhere in the USSR wouldn't have.

Seems legit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine#cite_note-merriam-webst...

--------

You

However, comparing a (typically accidental) prepended word to slavery makes me recoil from your argument. I think it is similar to "Reductio ad Hitlerum"[1]. People who refer to the current country as "The Ukraine" are incorrect, but saying that they are implicitly supporting the history of that name is overreaching.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

Hopefully the auction ends before it's repossessed by its "original owners" who are closing in fast....

Interesting how recent developments continue to show the difference between how countries are treated when they have nuclear weapons vs. when they don't have, like North Korea vs. Iraq. Looking at Ukraine i wonder what Iran think :)

Many reasons why Iraq was considered more important to invaded, and all of those reasons are "barrels of oil", as elucidated in 2003 by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: "Look, the primarily [sic] difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil." [1]

[1] http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcrip...

If you're claiming the U.S. would be likely to invade North Korea if they had significant oil reserves, that's wrong. As Wolfowitz says in the context around your quote:

The concern about implosion is not primarily at all a matter of the weapons that North Korea has, but a fear particularly by South Korea and also to some extent China of what the larger implications are for them of having 20 million people on their borders in a state of potential collapse and anarchy.

...

In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

Hard to draw from this that the "only" reason invading Iraq was more important was oil. The lack of economic leverage made a military option relatively more practical, as did the military and social situation of Iraq vis a vis its neighbors.

- Price tag of US $3,000,000.

Well, I'm convinced. Here is my credit card!

Seemed funny to me.

MS stands for Maritime Strike

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Bear.html

I've yet to come across any firm proof that the Bear has supersonic tip speeds, even the wiki article says "according to one media source".

Now obviously with any prop aircraft you can generate a scenario where the tips go supersonic, but I feel "The prop tips are well into the supersonic range" is a disingenuous statement. I do agree with you in general principle though - tips can, and do, go supersonic.

Some back-of-the-napkin calculations for the Bear, using the figures given by the media source on wikipedia: 5.7m prop diameter 750rpm at cruise

Circumference = pi*diameter = 18m 750rpm = 12.5 rotations a second

Giving a tip speed of 220m/s, so contrary to the media source the blades are not supersonic by themselves.

You could, of course, engineer a scenario where the combination of the airflow through the prop + the prop tip speed > mach. But you can do that with a Boeing Stearman too, you just avoid it by design due to the increase in drag, and not to mention the stress placed on prop blade that is subsonic at the root, transonic in the middle, and supersonic at the tip.

I've seen people give the noise created by the Bear as evidence of supersonic blades, but I'd put that down to interactions between the contra-rotating props, a bit like blade slap on a helo.

Now the Republic Thunderstreak is an interesting story - a plane with (proven) supersonic blades: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhSzReWTgs

Anyone know why there is a 5000 hour limit?

It's more a certain number of takeoff and landings rather than flight time. After that the metal is too weak and unsafe.

Each time the cabin pressure changes the skin moves. Each time it takes off or lands the wings flex. They probably flex during flight as well.

First link I found: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/aircraft_fati...

This aircraft was built in '87, by which time the Soviet economy was in serious trouble and training was at reduced levels. The Bear always projected a scarier image than was reality.

The US military-industrial complex amplified it for pocket-lining purposes.

Wouldn't the MIC over-emphasize Russian reliability whereas the rank-and-file tend to underestimate it?

Further, wouldn't RU do more or less the same, substituting design bureaus?

"Most Russian republics"? So, more than half of the 1?

And "Tu" is just an abbreviation for Tupolev, its not a particular plane of which there are variants. Saying a "TU variant" is like saying a Boeing variant.

And there are two different Tupolev strategic bombers that meet that general description (the Tu-22 and Tu-160), neither of which is a variant of the Bear.

So, name the 11 that have militaries that employ the bombers in question.

Uhm.....

To be fair, it is a pretty fast prop plane if restored.

Than sometimes you can pull up the air flight history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Any idea if the partial reunification will happen?

  ...yeah, sure, let me just call my buddy who used to be a mechanic for Tupolev.