Yakovlev 18A

G-BMJY is a Yakovlev Yak-18A, construction number 627, finished in Soviet Air Force markings as '07 yellow'. She was licence-built in Czechoslovakia by Strojírny První Pětiletky in 1959 and delivered to the Egyptian Air Force, where she served as 627 and flew for the last time in military hands on 25 January 1984 with 754 hours 35 minutes on the airframe. Salis Aviation of Paris recovered her from storage near Cairo in April 1985, shipped her to France in a container and carried out extensive work including a complete fabric recover. Robs Lamplough's British Aerial Museum bought her in December 1985; she was repaired, tested and assembled for the ferry flight to the United Kingdom during 1986 and registered G-BMJY. I have owned her since 2007, and she is based in the south of England. Aircraft of this type change hands rarely in the United Kingdom, and almost never with a history documented to this standard. The Yak-18 is the aeroplane on which a generation of Soviet pilots, Yuri Gagarin among them, first flew. The Yak-18A was the definitive development of the line: 260 horsepower from a nine-cylinder Ivchenko AI-14R radial turning a constant-speed wooden propeller, retractable tricycle undercarriage, two seats in tandem under a long glasshouse canopy, a welded light-alloy tube fuselage fabric-covered aft of the rear cockpit, and the honest, forgiving handling of an aircraft built to teach. It is a substantial machine — 10.6 metres of wing, 1,320 kg at maximum weight — and it flies like one: stable, unhurried and predictable, with none of the vices its appearance suggests. What it gives you is presence. The radial starts with a cloud of smoke and a sound nothing else on a British grass strip makes. It cruises at typically around 120 kt and will hold its own on a cross-country, it is aerobatic and it draws a crowd at every fly-in it attends. The aircraft has been flown and kept in permit. It has a Mode S transponder and a modern Trig 8.33 radio. She is sold with a canopy cover, tow bar, spares, spare engine and airframe manuals. Viewing is welcome at her base near to Marlborough by appointment.