Interview with Robert Hierl on the MiG-29 Fulcrum

One remark about a point, Robert mentions in this interview:
- He says, the pilots of the Bundesluftwaffe flew about 180 hours every year, whereas the pilots from the
NVA just reached at best half of that time.

Last year, I had the chance to listen to a lecture by a former NVA pilot, who was amongst the quite few taken
on to the Bundesluftwaffe after the reunification. There actually were differences of opinions, up to mutual rejection,
because the pilots from the former GDR often were regarded as inferior by their western comrades, because of the
lower flight hours. But in the Bundesluftwaffe the time from starting the engine of the aircraft to shutdown was counted
as flight time and every relocation flight added hours to the pilots log, whereas in the NVA, flight time was from releasing
the brakes to coming to a stand still again. And only flights with real military learning objectives were counted for the log !

So both kinds of hour counts weren't comparable, but were nevertheless used as gauge, leading to a lot of exasperation,
mainly amongst the former NVA pilots, especially as headcount reductions were mainly placed to the debit of them.
 
What a great interview. He really liked the Mig-29 and his first aircraft the F-4. Still flying at 57 and testing the Typhoon.
 
Some of his points are interesting. His criticisms of the MiG-29 are mostly about the man-machine interface rather than the quality of the systems. I thought his remarks about how Western AAMs filtered out western flares great, and Soviet AAMs filtered out Soviet flares great, but each being vulnerable to the others flares was interesting.
 
Good stuff. He's definitely had an interesting career.
 

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