Chaika Seabears
With the centenary recreation flight of the London-Darwin air race by the L-65 Seabear, I've illustrated the whole of the Chaika production list, highlighting some of the cutting edge designs from the booming Russian GA industry.
In the mid-1980's a design group was set up in Samara to design a light aircraft seaplane. After several flying designs, the 6-place L-4 was flown in the late 1990's. Two production companies were formed to create production aircraft; Chaika considered the market for 6-seats to be too restricted and scaled the design down to a 4-seat aircraft, while AeroVolga enlarged and moodified the design to become the 8-seat LA-8.
Chaika retained the distinctive V-tail with horizontal tailplane of the L-4, and produced the all-composite L-42. Modifications to engines and equipment led to the L-44 and L-45 models.
Increasing size led back to the 6-seat, with the L-72 model.
Chaika is able to create bespoke custom aircraft, with the L-65 being made to order as a modified L-45 fuselage mated to the L-72 wing - specifically for export to Australia.
Likewise a land-plane version of the 44 has been built as the S-44, being further modified to carry mapping equipment as the S-44F. An alternate land gear arrangement for the landplane has also been designed, but not yet built. A single S-72 landplane was also built to request, but was destroyed in a crash in Feb 2019.
These beautiful aircraft have some very delightful colour schemes, which unfortunately are difficult to portray at FD scale.