Angara and Yamal

[WhyMe]

Valentin Korchagin started working on a multi-purpose amphibian seaplane in the 1960's, while still in college. The project nicknamed "Angara" (after a Siberian river) was designed with extreme weather conditions of Siberia and Russian North in mind. Two engines driving a single pusher propeller were located inside the fuselage, behind the wings, to allow access and maintenance without leaving warm and comfort of the cabin.

Despite very positive response from the Department of Polar Aviation, the project was buried because of extreme bureaucracy and rigidity of the Soviet economy.

By the late 1980's, when extensive development of Siberian oil and natural gas deposits started, the interest in such an aircraft rose again and Korchagin offered an updated project named "Yamal" (after a Siberian peninsula). It had the same layout as "Angara" and included a number of innovations.



This time some progress has been made. Several companies agreed to finance the project, a full size mock-up has been built and shown and even an agreement with Canadair regarding their engines was achieved. Unfortunately, after the Soviet Union collapsed the project was abandoned once again. Korchagin died, the mock-up of "Yamal" was burned during fire-fighter exercise.

The mock-up:


Corresponding article in the Flight International: http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1990/1990%20-%203106.html

[MrWidgeon]

Interesting designs, thanks for bring them to us.
Too bad they didn't go anywhere.

Bill

[Rajay]

Very cool concepts. I wonder if anyone still officially owns the rights to the two designs....

[seawings]

You must be a mind-reader, I just received a parcel containing a load of information on the Yamal........that will be for an up-date on SEAWINGS, but I'll try and get that done asap. (Still going through it)

[Rajay]

Just noticed - the drawings show the second design (the Yamal) with 6 cabin windows on each side, but the "mock-up" has 7. Either someone tweaked the design or they did a poor job of reading the blueprints....

If it had "gull" wings (with twin pusher engines) the Angara would remind me of the Piaggio P.136 - the tail cone and tailwheel installation are very similar.

[WhyMe]

Just noticed - the drawings show the second design (the Yamal) with 6 cabin windows on each side, but the "mock-up" has 7. Either someone tweaked the design or they did a poor job of reading the blueprints....

Well, it's just a mock-up... I wouldn't be surprised if the windows were just painted on the fuselage

If it had "gull" wings (with twin pusher engines) the Angara would remind me of the Piaggio P.136 - the tail cone and tailwheel installation are very similar.

True. The reasoning behind this configuration is to improve aerodynamics of the wing by removing engine nacelles from it and to better protect the propeller blades and air intakes (located on top of the fuselage) from water.

[Rajay]

If the windows on that mock-up are just painted, they did a VERY good job. There seems to be trim panels inside the "windows" around the frames and the front one shows a reflection of light just like glass.

Another thing I just noticed while studying the drawings again - the first Angara concept has an angled step wherein the break in the chine is forward of the break in the keel and the step tapers back toward the keel, but the second concept, the Yamal, has a "square" cut step in which the break of the step is at the same exact hull station on both the chine and the keel and the joints at each are 90 degrees to each other.

On the Consolidated PBY series, the steps were the other way around; the early/original step on all of the PBY-1 through -6A was 90 degrees/square cut and intersected the chines and the keel at the same hull station, but on the later NAF PBN-1 Nomad variant, which was considered to be a refined and more advanced development in terms of hydrodynamics, they went to the angled/tapered step - plus a longer secondary hull on which they moved the second step back one section further aft.

Curious. To me at least....