Randy Ball's vintage MiG-17F fighter is currently on display at the CAF RGV Wing Museum at the Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport, 955 S. Minnesota Ave., and will fly during Air Fiesta 2012, March 24-25. The aircraft first entered service with the Soviet Air Force in March 1960.
It would’ve been unthinkable just a couple of decades ago, but a Soviet-era MiG-17F fighter is laying over in Brownsville for a few weeks.
The rare aircraft is on display at the CAF Rio Grande Valley Wing museum at the Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport, and will be among the stars of Air Fiesta 2012, taking place March 24-25. Randy Ball, the plane’s Tyler-based pilot/owner, said the North Vietnamese Air Force’s MiG-17s were the bane of U.S. pilots during Vietnam. While the aircraft is only "only marginally supersonic," he said, it was much more maneuverable than the American fighters — including the MiG’s primary foe, the F-4 Phantom.
"We got to fighting (the MiG-17) in Vietnam," Ball said. "If we got into a tight fight with it, it could just go around pulling Gs. We didn’t have anything that could. I have ‘fought’ numerous times against the F-4 and you can just turn inside of them. Until the F-16 flew in 1976 it was the tightest turning fighter in the world."
Ball, who is also an airline captain, has 1,000 flying hours in Soviet jets, the most of any pilot in the country. He’s also the only pilot FAA-certified to perform unlimited jet aerobatics day or night. The "unlimited" designation means he’s approved to fly as low as he wants over the runway during aerobatic performances — even at night. The MiG-17 was the first Soviet jet, and one of the first jets in the world, to be equipped with an afterburner.
"It flies unbelievably," Ball said. "It is a Ferrari in the sky. One of the passes I make is a very low pass close to the crowd where I accelerate to 0.9 the speed of sound. I make at least one pass each show at that speed, so people can see what 700 mph looks like close to the ground."
Piloting the single-seat fighter is an exhilarating experience, but also challenging, he said.
"With an aircraft of its vintage, with its severely swept wings, flying slow for example is a significant no-no. What I mean by slow: For that airplane, touchdown speed is almost 170 mph."
The MiG cruises at more than 500 mph and burns about 400 gallons of jet fuel per hour. It features a functional ejection seat and original machine guns mounted under the nose. This particular aircraft entered service with the Soviet Air Force in March 1960 and took part in the Soviet crackdown on "Prague Spring," the 1968 Czech uprising, according to Ball. In 1982 it was transferred to the Polish air force reserve and flown by a general who had flown the identical plane as a young captain, he said.
In 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the aircraft was stripped from the inventory and put in a field to rot. Ball acquired it in 1994, and a four-year restoration was completed in 2001. A retired MiG-17 can still be had for roughly the price of a new Chevy Suburban, though restoring, flying and maintaining one entails a great deal of expense.
Ball’s MiG, nicknamed "Check-Six," is one of a handful of vintage jets flying the North American air show circuit these days. Since once plentiful spare parts are becoming scarce and expensive — former Eastern Bloc countries were required to destroy their stockpiles of Soviet hardware as a condition of joining NATO — this generation may be the last to see vintage jets like Check-Six fly, Ball said.
Air Fiesta Chairman David Hughston said Ball’s MiG would be a prominent part of this year’s air show, particularly the show’s focus on Vietnam-era aircraft, though a number of World War II aircraft will be on hand as well.
"We are spending a lot of money on our Vietnam segment," he said. "We think it’s the right thing to do. We have a lot of Vietnam vets in the Valley, and we had the opportunity this year to get the MiG and a lot of other classic Vietnam-era aircraft."
Those include a Douglas A-26 Invader, a Douglas Skyraider, and a Bell Huey helicopter — the United States’ ubiquitous, all-purpose workhorse during Vietnam.
"We did score a Huey," Hughston said. "It was an expensive score, but we’re going to have a Huey. The expensive part about having the Huey isn’t so much the appearance fee, it’s the fuel to get it down here. But we think that it’ll really add a lot of atmosphere."
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