su-30 MKI

A test pilot has this to say about the pride of the IAF

"The Aviators who fly her love her, but the ones who fly against her wish they never did... Many call her the eight wonder... They believe she parallels none in the sky... None when she Strikes, none when she escorts, none when she Intercepts... Beacuse she does not merely guard the skies, she dominates the battle space... the Sukhoi 30MKI is every fighter pilots' dream machine.. she may have the ruggedness of the russian airframe and the finess of the western avionics, But she belongs only to the Indian airforce.. Modernised and customised to serve as a strategic weapon "

Now those are some awe-inspiring words and believe me i have seen this machine fly as close as 200m above the ground.. of course it can;t do the cobra manouver at that altitude, but whatever little it could was breathtaking.. so much so that it created a vacuum around us n we lost all track of time. I will never forget that Aero India show in 2005, I happened to be in b'lore just by chance, having met with an accident and hence delaying my departure to delhi. Looking back now i thank God that the accident was minor and i got to see aero india too.

Apart from the Su 30 spectacle i also got to see the new Russian Mig 29 OVT or rechristened as the Mig 35 which flauted its new thrust vectoring system to impress the IAF. The gripens,rafales and F15s too made their presence felt. I saw the sea-harrier perform for the first time, they're an ageing fleet and India is desperately waiting for the 16 Mig 29K with INS Vikramaditya, wish the Russians wud send it sooner, greedy lot that they are. (The 3rd pic is of the mig 29K painted in IAF colors)

I'll verify that quote about Su-3o, it gets a little overboard by calling it the 8th wonder and about it being only being with the IAF. AFAIK Russia sold a lot of su-30s to china too, but ours is an improved version called MKI. Only issue is China is already mass producing the model that russia gave it. Its gonna be there primary fighter whereas India will use Su-30 as its premier a/c and as a user of the last resort.

Homebound

The 15th august weekend was fast approaching and I was planning a quick getaway to namma Bengaluru, but as i later realized, so were countless others from pune. Getting a ticket home was next to impossible or thats what i was made to believe. I ran to the city, my roomi too had a sudden urge to go to b'lore. I managed to get a few tickets in VRL, but roomi changed his mind. I went ahead n bought my tickets. I was a little apprehensive if I'll be able to make it to this place called 'swargate' by 7 pm on a thrusday particularly when i wud hav to travel for somewhere around 25 kms after my classes got over. Anyways that was for later, right then i was happy just to hold the tickets in my hands, loking fwd to the trip ahead. Rads had got me a new Swatch from BKK, I was bursting to get my hands on that plus the lure of home food too was pulling me away. I still am of the opinion that this mess food os better than what we had in NSIT but home food is always mouth watering.

As D-Day or rather I-day approached my roomi again wanted to go to b'lore n this urge got really desperate with him ready to pay double the ticket amt. I suggested him to try his luck at the travel houses on the d-day, so he came along and after a long wait, wherein we tried lots of travels and some came with schemes like charging double the amt for a seat in the cabin and so on, he finally got a seat in my vrl bus at no extra cost and that too a window seat. Now thats luck!!!

Well off we went on a 16 hr journey in a volvo, was quite comfy, they played 2 movies, funny n eternal bores. 'welcome' n 'golmaal' which i have seen grudgingly plenty of times. Early morning we reached Chitradurga in Karnataka and it was a sight to behold... all around us peeking thru the low clouds were rotating heads -- windmills, thousands of them!!!

The site ranked pretty high on one of the most beautiful mornings ever rating. I wish i had a picture. I was so mesmerized i even forgot to take a snap but its clocked forever in my head.

VRL score high when it comes to infrastructure setup and their quality of service too is better, it kinda justifies the high ticket rates they charge. They almost manage to stick to their timelines and the buses are in good condition, the pitstops are at good places, they have their own logistics centre at chitradurga, very scenic to say the least.

I too was quite impressed alongwith my roomie though i hated to accept it coz of the higher ticket charge but the journey was fun and i was in b'lore by morning 10 am, took nearly 14 hrs for me to be greeted by the great b'lore weather, which was almost the same as we had in pune when we left.

Later on at home we had to dispose off a few puppies that a stray bitch had left on at our doorsteps (literally doorsteps), it was sad but had to be done, will put a pic of them huddled in front of the door. Later we dropped their mom too at the 'dog shelter'. We all felt guilty but my parents and the neighbors were having a tough time handling all the irate passers by, who were being chased n scared by the bitch. It was an act of cruelty for welfare of the masses, with whom we had hardly anything to do, but sadly man comes first n all others suffer.

Tryst with a tyre

There we were cruising above 100 kph the streo blaring some foot tapping numbers, me enjoying my McD 'chicken' burger almost in a trance and all of a sudden there was a small almost missed out 'thud' followed by a small burring sound. My first thought was that its some new song starting but then it continued and got out of tunhen our esteemed co-ordinator realised its a puncture. I had never imagined a puncture in a 20 lacs Skoda Laura with tubeless tyres and that too when it was running. As a general rule Tubeless tyres, when punctured go flat when they're still, not moving.

Its been raining mercilessly in Pune for the last fortnight or so and that fateful night was no different. Pranav did call his driver but he was on the other end of Pune and we being engineers suddenly had an itch to fix this issue at hand.

And the hunt started for the spare, found the spare and the tools,but that was just the easier part. Now starts the tamasha, the jack was in no way similar to what I had seen for a maruti or other small cars. We were all cranked to say the least. We all got down on the muddy road to figure out first where do we plug in the jack, that is if we ever manage to unscrew that thing. The 'Laura' is a huge car and has a huge base, mostly plastic, so I had to probe the underbelly near the tyre to find out a solid base. Till that time were all drenched and covered in mud too, looked like that kareena kapoor ad, when she was smeared in chocolate only difference being we were all in formals and weren't appealing in any sense of the imagination. That done we moved to unscrewing the jack, the instructions weren't helping. We put it under and did it, but as it turned out, we had done it upside down and as mentiones above we were all covered in what seemed like hot chocolate but was actually mud. My headache wasn't helping things.

Then more help arrived in the form of Mr Chaddi n Manish. We had realised this jack position was not correct as it wasn't very user friendly. Pawan took the lead and fixed it the other way and this time it worked but the spare tyre now decided to not help us. It was spotted rolling away from the car at some distance and Pranav had to sweat it out to catch up. There were a few more instances of pure absurdity like when we didnt' know where to find the screws for the radial and stuff. The 10 pointer gal in our team (read Snehal) came to our rescue there and left us all red faced.

There was more than one humbling experience that night and for a person like me who already has most of his ego leaked out had a tough time coping up.

But experiences are there to be recounted and pondered over and laughed at. I'm sure I'll recount this for atleast few more days to come coz its been a long time since I was marooned in the middle of nowhere and had shitloads of fun doing it.