Egorievsk Civil Aviation Technical College, Russian Federation - June 2012
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[photo/serial list]
[photos from behind the scenes]
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The following morning we drove to the town of Yegoryevsk (Egorievsk), which is approximately 50 miles to the southeast of Moscow.
Here sits an aviation college with large aircraft and no airport close by.
The college itself was founded in 1918 and has seen over 30,000 graduates, including at least 1000 foreign students from 66 countries.
On the grounds are a good variety of aircraft including a pair of interesting Tu-154s.
CCCP-85010 was the last pre-production aircraft built, whereas the next aircraft that came off the line, CCCP-85011 was the first true production aircraft. It was nice to see these two important aircraft still extant.
The Air Mali An-26B (TZ-ACK) was returned to Russia in the 1970s and has been at the college since the mid 1990s. Certainly not something you every day!
I was collared by one of the engineers after we'd looked around the static aircraft. He motioned us to follow him to the edge of the facility into a small wooded area.
Here sat a large rusting frame of some kind. He told us, in broken English, that this was in fact a sled made to transport the aircraft that we saw present.
He said that the aircraft had landed in a nearby frozen field, and then the aircraft had been loaded onto the frame and towed to the college.
In Russia nothing is ever impossible, they will always find a way via ingenuity!