Flying & Testing the Russian SU-27 Flanker | Dave Best (Clip)

Former RAF Phantom and test pilot, Dave Best, shares how the opportunity came about to fly and test the SU-27 Flanker.

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Original thumbnail photo by Dave Best

[DJEDzTV]

Su-27 is a masterpiece, i am building a model of one now and it looks naturally beautiful from all angles.

[LittlealxYT]

So humble, balanced and articulate for someone that has achieved so much in their life. I don't even know him and I want to buy this man a beer and listen to him for
an hour. great interview

[kris]

The most beautiful air fighters, are the Russian ones!😊
Greetings from Croatia

[uha]

What an amazing experience this guy had. This is the most interesting take on a Flanker I've heard.

[matthayward]

Probably the best bit of one of your best ever interviews!

[nickj]

Such a gorgeous looking aircraft. I'm glad it flies as good as it looks.

[obsidianzarok]

Super beautiful aircraft look at those curves.

[mikoriad]

What a dream opportunity for a pilot... Great one again!

[akm]

The cobra maybe a “party trick” but it never hurts if you can stop on a dime mid flight and have the enemy overshoot you so you can gain their 6. It also shows the planes’ incredible ability to recover from a stall.

[rickigoode]

I was at the first Farnborough with the SU27 display that did a cobra roll. It was awesome.

[Land_Storm]

who would think a big jet like the falnker can beat a small fast jet likr the Hawk in ACM !!! wow
love the flankers

[arduinoguru]

I needed to watch this second time after a year, to fully understand what this expert pilot said.

[matthewnewnham-runner-writer]

Another excellent interview – thank you very much. My ears pricked up when I heard Dave mention Andy Young. By a strange coincidence, I actually have Andy's flight suit from 1986. Andy and I swapped flight suits at Nellis one Bass Ale fuelled Friday night at the officers' mess. He looked at my USAF fight suit and said he rather fancied one of them, and I said likewise about his. So he said, "Fancy a swap?" We were in a group of five or six of us, including one woman on my right. So, wanting to be a gentleman, I turned to her and said, do you mind? She smiled and said, "Not at all." So we proceeded to strip off our flight suits right then and there and made the swap. Happy days!

[polnoeceloe]

So, the Russians made a very simple and functional aircraft. This pilot did not compare the ease of control of the Russian and Western aircraft, but from the fact that he repeated several times about simplicity, I can conclude that the control of the Russian aircraft is easier

[michaelsmulkowski]

I had this game on the PC. Very underrated.

[deetwodcs]

The flanker is one or no, it is, my favorite russian airplane. I love the little bottom nintendo DS screen w/ datalink it has compared to the hud replicator the mig-29 has.
I also love that the guy thinks the same way about the cobra as I do, it's mostly a party trick and makes me cringe when watching top gun. It used to be so cool, then I started to play simulators, losing energy is death. Kinda like you sweat you die when surviving in the wilderness, most of the time if you lose to much energy (compared to your bandit ofcourse) you die in a dogfight.. in cold war jets anyway. In the new gen you don't do anything but BVR anyway so speed doesn't matter that much anymore.

[juliensorel]

From what I have read the "flanker" class have state-of-the-art radar systems. I know this applies to the su-35, and I was hoping to find out if it applies to the su-27. Flying is one part, detecting what is coming at you is another part.

[dwoolwichpoly]

The Cobra is a last resort manoeuvre where it becomes useful for a very short window of time under specific circumstances and gets you the win in a dogfight. Otherwise its a party trick to showcase the agility of the airplane and how it can stall the engine and get back up and running in a short space of time

[frog]

Awesome interview, just to add, cobra is not a party trick, its a situational manoeuvre. It makes an aircraft more unpredictable in the dogfight and even help you lose a missile if you are lucky. It gives you the ability to slow down rapidly and dive down, changing the aircraft trajetory drastically. It is not the singular ability that gives Russian fighters the edge, its just something that would make any fighter more successful. Even F22 can do a cobra, not as good as the Sukhoi, but 80-90% the same.

[mrvidusmrvidus]

The Sukhoi designers are still banned from Wimbledon though.