The first copy of the Be-200 amphibian reached its flight readiness only by the fall of 1998, two years after assembly. This delay was largely due to financial problems both at the development enterprise in Taganrog and at the Irkutsk IAPO. Nevertheless, the crew of test pilot Konstantin Valerievich Babich lifted a jet flying boat for the first time on September 24, 1998. It happened at the IAPO airfield at 16.50 local time in compliance with all safety precautions. The fact is that a year earlier there was a terrible disaster of the An-124, which fell on residential buildings in Irkutsk during takeoff. For this reason, it was then forbidden to take off from the factory airfield towards residential areas. The Altair's first flight lasted 27 minutes and was accompanied by a related Be-12P, from which photographs and video were taken. The turboprop amphibian was driven for such a solemn occasion to Irkutsk from his native Taganrog.
I must say that for the Irkutsk aircraft plant, the production of such a specific machine as a jet flying boat was in its own way a unique project. Many techniques for assembling and designing the Be-200 were borrowed from the shipbuilding industry. The emerging problems had to be solved together with specialists from Taganrog, sometimes working in three shifts. Therefore, the takeoff of the unusual car was eagerly awaited - a huge number of people gathered at the airport.
“The first flight is the birth of a new aircraft, an amphibious aircraft, a unique aircraft. The feelings were great - we all prayed that everything would be fine. And everything went well. It was a delight when the plane landed at the airfield in Irkutsk: people on the rooftops were applauding, tens of thousands of people around were applauding , - recalls in an interview the general designer of the Be-200 Gennady Panatov, who was discussed in the previous part of the material.
Until October 17, several flights were made, a couple of which were only a demonstration of capabilities in front of guests and journalists at the official presentation of the aircraft. And at the end of April 1999, the first assembled amphibian with registration number RA-21511 gathered on a long journey - across the whole of Russia to Taganrog. It is noteworthy that until the summer, the Be-200 was not tested for "seaworthiness", but on June 9 it was sent to Le Bourget 99, where it surprised the guests of the air show, dumping 6 tons of water on an imaginary fire.
For the first time I felt the water outside the Altair fuselage on July 7, and this experiment was unsuccessful. The aircraft clearly heeled on the water surface, and also vigorously took water through the cracks in the skin: in Irkutsk, during assembly, it was not possible to comply with the requirements for tightness. The first problem was solved by installing more voluminous floats on the wing edges from the old Be-12, and the fuselage was "caulked" with improvised means. Throughout the summer of 1999, the plane only made test "heats" at high speeds in the waters of the Taganrog Bay - the design headquarters was in no hurry to test takeoff from the water. And only on September 10 the car performed its signature trick - it took off and splashed down. By this time, it had already been decided to create in Taganrog a Center for the training of hydroaviation specialists for the needs of the Ministry of Emergencies. The modification for extinguishing fires and serving in the ministry was named Be-200ES - it will become the most widespread in the future.
The take-off and splashdown of Altair was shown to the general public at the September Third International Exhibition "Gidroaviasalon - 2000" in Taganrog. At the same time, the Be-200 distinguished itself with 24 world records in the classes of seaplanes and amphibious aircraft in terms of the time to climb 3000, 6000 and 9000 meters without cargo and with ballast of 1, 2 and 5 tons. In total, by 2009, the Taganrog jet amphibious has broken 42 world records.
Car for the Ministry of Emergency Situations
A full-fledged window to the sky for the Be-200 opened in August 2001, when Gennady Panatov was solemnly awarded a type certificate of a limited category. For this, the car had to make 223 flights with 213 flight hours. We also decided on the customer. The General Designer of the Design Bureau Beriev recalled the negotiations with the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu:
“I called him and said that there is a plane that is perfect for performing the tasks set before the Emergencies Ministry. He flew to Taganrog, examined the plane, said that the the government of Russia to allocate money for the construction of the first five serial Be-200 aircraft. And this is how the life of the Be-200 aircraft began."
In the early 2000s, the Be-200 actively traveled around the world. The amphibious aircraft traveled to Malaysia, South Korea, India, UAE, Turkmenistan, France, Greece and Germany. The machine invariably attracted attention with its spectacular water intake in planing from an open reservoir and dumping in front of the audience of the show. An extreme test for the Taganrog aircraft was tests in 2002 in Armenia, when the capabilities of the aircraft to operate in the highlands were assessed. The sites were the Gyumri airfield and Lake Sevan, which rise more than 1500 meters above sea level.
The second flying example of the amphibian was the Be-200ES in the specification for the Ministry of Emergencies and under the number 7682000003, which rose into the sky of Irkutsk on August 27, 2002. Outwardly, the aircraft did not have any special differences from "number one" - only an elegant livery and two blisters. But inside there was a modernized airborne flight and navigation complex ARIA-200M, new EDSU and SPU-200ChS systems, an external sound warning system SGU-600 and an SX-5 searchlight. The crew added two observers, whose jobs were located near the same blisters. Of course, the highlight of the Be-200 for the Ministry of Emergency Situations was the on-board observation system AOS (Airborne Observation System) - an electro-optical thermal imaging system operating in real time, which allows monitoring the underlying surface (earth and water) at any time of the day and in all weather conditions. … Most of the new equipment for the Be-200ES was produced abroad: in the USA, Great Britain, Israel, Germany and Switzerland. The D-436TP engines, we recall, were produced at the Zaporozhye Motor Sich. There is obviously nothing to replace them in Russia now, so the plans are to install SaM146 from the domestic SSJ-100 until 2021. Naturally, in a modification adapted for the seas. Only in Russia such a motor is not completely assembled - the hot and most problematic part is made by the French company Snecma.
Since then, the Be-200ES has managed to operate in many "hot" spots of the planet, dumping hundreds of tons of water on forest fires. The last instance of the Taganrog amphibious vehicle for the Ministry of Emergency Situations arrived on September 7, 2018, and now the total staff of vehicles in the department includes 9 winged vehicles. It seems that the ministry is happy with the car: the head of the Southern Regional Center of the EMERCOM of Russia, Igor Oder, said about the amphibian:
“According to the pilots, these are unique, good, modern, reliable and powerful machines that help to extinguish fires. The geography of their application is very wide."
One Be-200ES was purchased by Azerbaijan, and five more countries are now in the process of ordering. Is the machine successful and efficient? Not so simple.
Criticism of fire extinguishing aircraft
In addition to the obvious problem with Ukrainian engines, which, for obvious reasons, someday will end, in the professional scientific community in the last decade, the idea has been expressed that the use of Be-200 aircraft for extinguishing forest fires is unacceptable. And this applies not only to the Taganrog car - the problem is common to all such machines. The main reason is the insufficient density of the water flow, which the Be-200, CL-412, Il-76 or even the American giant Boeing-747 bring down on the burning forest. The coefficient of efficient use of water in cases of "carpet" extinguishing does not exceed 1-2%, and the financial costs are enormous. Actually, we always read about the localization of forest fires, and not about extinguishing, in reports on the actions of firefighting aircraft. The plane simply "smears" precious water over a narrow strip, only nailing down the fire for a while.
Calculations show that a forest fire in a small area of 500-600 m2 requires 5-6 aircraft to extinguish (and not localize) at once, and only 10 minutes after emergence. Nowhere and never will such efficiency and mass scale be realized. In Russia, however, with the existing layout of airfields and reservoirs suitable for refueling seaplanes and amphibians in the gliding mode, the time of approaching the foci is measured in hours. It is very expensive to extinguish with the Be-200 - 1 liter of water costs 5-10 times more than in a fire-fighting helicopter. At the same time, the cost of the Taganrog amphibian is about $ 47 million versus $ 4-6 million for the Mi-17 or Ka-32. And the helicopter also uses water more efficiently - they directly extinguish a fire up to 6% (for the Be-200, 1-2%). And in specific hovering modes with the use of firefighting troops, proposed by Doctor of Science, a specialist in the field of combustion physics Abduragimov Joseph Mikaelevich, the coefficient of water use by a fire-extinguishing helicopter can rise up to 50%! It is not difficult to calculate how many fire-fighting helicopters can be bought instead of the Be-200ES fleet of 9 vehicles that the Emergencies Ministry currently has. And another 24 amphibians have been ordered by 2024, which are already being assembled in Taganrog. One has only to imagine what will happen to the Be-200 if the scientists manage to overcome the conservatism of Avialesokhrana and the Ministry of Emergencies in the method of extinguishing the forest! Although this does not negate the fact that the Taganrog amphibious vehicle is the best vehicle of its class in the world. It remains only to find a worthy use for it.
