Letňany Open Day, Prague, Czech Republic (6/9/2014)

[upnorth]

Hello all;

This past Saturday, I made the trip to Prague to take in the open day even at the city's historic Letňany airfield. Letňany is a grass field and 2014 marks its 90th anniversary.

It was a very laid back and purely civilian event with sight seeing flights all day and both contemporary and historic aircraft on display:

The boxy but always entertaining full scale Avia BH.1 replica, a common performer at Czech airshows:





A Mráz M.1C Sokol, one of only two or three airworthy examples of the type anywhere:






A Praga E.114 Air Baby in from Switzerland:




Full scale Tatra T.101 replica:




T.101 with vintage Tatra T603 car:


Polikarpov Po-2 in from Slovenia:




Orličan L-60 Brigadýrs in both inline and radial flavours:




A Beech 18 in from the UK:



As always, any and all comments are welcomed.

[Captain Canada]

Great selection of photos !

Love that boxy BH.1...would have been neat to see it fly !

That Air Baby is quite the ungainly machine ! Looks like a Cub from the front and then in profile it looks like somebody stepped on it and broke his back/ squished it !

The T.101 replica is just awesome....looks like an inter war fighter. Never heard of it before, have to do some lookin' online !

As for the L-60, I'll take the inline version pls. Funny how modern it looks opposed to the WWII look of the radial !

[upnorth]

I'm glad you like them, it was a great day out.

All kinds of good stuff about the original Tatra T.101 of 1937 and the present replica can be found at the website of the people who built the replica:

http://aviators.cz/en/home

As for the L-60, the radial engine was actually a later development as the inline engine used for the earlier ones left them rather under powered.

The original BH.1 was the Avia company's first aircraft and dates to 1920 and was the progenitor of a line of similarly boxy but nimble interwar aircraft. Here's a short summary of it (there is an English translator function on the page):

http://avia.vyrobce.cz/doc/2index.htm

[upnorth]

There is not one among them that I don't like. Great shots of great aircraft, thanks for sharing

BTW the Sokol, is that the same manufacturer that does the reverse tricycle aircraft? There is one of those based near Adelaide here in Australia, I have seen it a few times and it looks odd on the ground.

Thanks for the kind comments.

The reverse tricycle aircraft you're thinking of is the Orličan L-40 Meta Sokol of the mid 1950s. As Orličan was the descendant company of Mráz, they can be seen as the same outfit.

[lancer]

Some really beautiful aircraft there...The Tatra 101, even if it is a replica, and the Orlican L60 are my faves. Thanks for posting Upnorth!!!

[PR19_Kit]

The Tatra 603 looks superb! You can see it oversteering just standing there with the engine off. 

[NARSES2]

Nice shots but my fav is that Avia BH.1 

[upnorth]

Thanks for all the good comments! Here's a few extra pics from the day; I don't think they're quite as good, but since you're enjoying...   :

[PR19_Kit]

Gliders at an airshow, not something you see very often un the UK, sad to say.