I was surprised to find out for what purpose the money that i gave as contribution to the Air Club in early 1999 were used at. I thought they will go just into some guy's pocket, just like in any other field of operations in Romania. I was impressed to hear that they were put to good use. Nobody stole them, nobody bought anything personal with them, no generals have been building holiday-houses and no colonels have bought themselves any new cars. Aviation, either military or civilian, is the only field in Romania which is still corruption-free.

Well, it's somehow bad that i had to read this in the national aircraft magazine Top Gun special Romania . Why didn't they told it to us before, i don't know. Maybe they were not yet sure that they could raise the money, maybe they intended to repair or build something else with this money and the decision was taken in the last moment vs the decision to repair some buildings or to buy some new gliders. However, I am happy that it turned out this way.
Having such a wonderful aircraft on our airfields is a "dream" that not even the most optimistic of us could have even deared to think of for the next 3, 5 or maybe even 10 yrs. This news came as a complete shock for everybody, and it was a great day when it came. Something like this only happens once in a lifetime, and this is the equivalent of the Somali Air Force to buy F-22 Raptors or of the Romanian Air Force to buy B2 Spirits. We are all sorry that they couldn't also repair some old gliders, give licence to the ones that just lay there in the hangar or repair the buildings, aircraft, towers or buy new IAR-35 high performance gliders, or at least install a G-meter for Chirst sake so that we wouldn't have to guess "how much did we pulled how much did we pulled" all the time, but this is even better... Extra300L may be flying in MY airfield this year, at an airshow, and if that ever happens, i promise i'll try my best to be there and to make pictures with me in front of the World's Nomber One Propeller Acrobatical Aircraft.
Until that happens, all i have is hope and a lot of facts about the Extra300L, for those of you out there who never heard of it (?) or who don't know its exact capabilities. Unfortunately, due to my great school program and thanks to my teachers and the useless government that changes the laws every week, i won't have the phisical time to put that on the net until july 2000. But 'til then, here are some quick facts:
Extra 300L, made in Germany. Maximum G resistence: +/- 10G. Maximum speed: 304 km/h. Stall speed: 100km/h. The wings are placed lower on the fuselage body in order to achieve higher performance than the one of previous versions.
They are also made of carbon fibre and other such materials without which they couldn't do all the things they do. The Extra300's only rival is the Sukhoi Su29/Su31 Fujifilm series, and the only maneouvre that the Su29 can do and Extra300 canNOT do is rotating around the propeller, a very impressive one. However, i personally think that Extra is better. More expensive a bit, but it's German work dudes, not anything to compare with good-old "parusky" (Russian)-style-quality we're soooo used to here in Romania...

©1999, Sorin A Crasmarelu

october 1999 -
february 2000

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