A friend of mine in the US (who is a pilot) sent me a message last night – she’s involved in one of these postcard exchange things – and someone from Russia had sent her a post card with Soviet era postage stamps on it (1980s, CCCP on the stamp etc). One of the stamps depicted a glider in flight. I’m not sure what type of glider (it’s not a Blanik L13), the stamp was from 1983.
Which raises the question. Who in the Soviet Union (and in the then Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe) would have been able to fly gliders? Would civilians have been permitted to go soaring? The eastern bloc in general seemed to do everything to stop people leaving, and gliders on a good day can cover over 1000km – would the Soviets have allowed Russians to do it who lived sufficiently far from the borders to make escape in a glider impractical?
Anyone on the forum have first hand experience of civilian light aircraft/gliders in Russia/Eastern Europe before the Berlin Wall came down?
The stamp in question is this one:
(A Google image search shows there were a lot of Soviet Union stamps featuring all sorts of different glider types).
I have no piloting experience since I left CZ in 1969 aged 12, but I can tell you that only very trusted communist party members could fly GA (glider or powered) – for the reason you give.
Where we lived, Pribram (LKPM), the head of the uranium mines, Karel Bocek, had a “personal” Morava 200 which he flew very freely. I got a flight in it once because he was after my mum 
He escaped eventually under a truck; presumably they pulled his flying privileges by then. It’s also interesting that he escaped from the Pankrac prison – we lived right opposite it 1957-1960.
The system was not 100% tight… obviously if you brown-nosed for long enough you would eventually be trusted, and there were a few escapes. My guess is that your privileges depended to some extent how close to the border with the Decadent Imperialist West you were… Also bear in mind that the border area with the West was heavily guarded and a glider anywhere near would be fired at immediately.
That glider is a LAK-12 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAK-12
Fiberglass and carbon in the early 80es… ahem.
The most popular glider in the Eastern Bloc was the Let-13 Blanik (more than 4000 built if memory serves).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LET_L-13_Blaník
Romania built about 450 IS28s and variants thereof (mostly for export).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICA_IS-28
Civilians were allowed to fly gliders (provided you didn’t come from an ex “bourgeois” family).
More interestingly – getting the license was free, or almost.
The L-13 is well known to us, in fact one of those Wikipedia images is of our old L-13 (before huge numbers, including ours, were grounded by a very costly AD)
You might consider switching to a IS28 then – the factory has come out with a (cheap) SLEP option allowing to fly them beyond the 35 year airframe life.
We already got a new two seater (a Berkfalke 4) which we like very much :-) We do miss the L-13 though, we used to do some light aerobatics with that ship. Unfortunately the thing that triggered the AD was one breaking up in (I think) Austria which was being aerobatted.
Yes, but AFAIK, a fix has been developed and some L-13s are flying again in in Germany. There was an article about that in a german pilot mag recently.
Flying gliders was generally not an issue in Czechoslovakia – unless you have really bad profile (serious crimes like your uncle was living in western germany etc. ;-´) ). but it was case by case, some flying clubs were more open, some not – number of pilots were eliminated in early 70ties after they mention they do not like Soviet army occupying Czechoslovakia. some of the were allowed to fly again later. Flying powered airplanes was a bit more selective but generally using the same principles. Flying was subsidized – as pre-military trainig but on most of clubs not free.
on preventing people to fly south or west – flights outside local area (15 NM and more from your home airport) had to be planned with air force and they have the authority not to approve flight -with no explanation. Planning a flight close to southern or western border was an issue, there was approx 50-80 km corridor parallel to border you need to avoid. Flying to airfields located in the area was possible but restricted. Those clubs located closer to border were under stricter control – just look at any map for location of LKBA – Breclav.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
Let-13 Blanik (more than 4000 built if memory serves).
close enough. There were nearly 3000 of the build and with follow-on L-23 the total number is above 3 000. There is EASA AD for original L-13 (most of the fleet). L-13A as the last production model is not effected by this as we as those L-13 converted to L-13A during overhaul. there are two fixes available for L-13 but both of them are a bit expensive…
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
Fiberglass and carbon in the early 80es… ahem.
Why not? There were mass-produced fiberglass gliders already in the 60s.
