Yakovlev AIR-12
The Yakovlev AIR-12 was a long-range sport aircraft designed and built in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s.
Design and development
In 1936 Yakovlev designed a long-range sport aircraft, intended to perform record-breaking long-distance flights. Adhering to his established design methods, the AIR-12 had a welded steel tube covered by removable aluminium panels at the nose, plywood skinning back to the wing trailing edge and fabric fabric-covered rear fuselage. The plywood skinned wooden wings had a high aspect ratio and were sharply tapered with leading-edge sweep and straight trailing-edges. Control surfaces and tail unit were built up with D1 and covered with fabric.Accommodation was provided for pilot and passenger/navigator in two closed cockpits. The pilot sat in the rear cockpit aft of the wing trailing-edges under a small forward-sliding canopy and flip-open side panels. The passenger/navigator's cockpit had a flush glazed roof and was situated over the centre-section.
Power was supplied by the ubiquitous Shvetsov M-11 5-cylinder air-cooled radial engine, driving a two-bladed wooden fixed pitch propeller. Fuel was carried in a single large tank in the fuselage forward of the front cockpit and an auxiliary tank could also be fitted in the front cockpit.
The AIR-12 was fitted with a retractable tail-wheel undercarriage with the main-wheels retracting inwards, operated by cables, torque shaft and hand crank in the pilots cockpit.
After initial flight testing and Piontovskiy's long distance flight in September 1936, the AIR-12 was re-engined with a M-11Ye.