Aero L-29 1/100 Papercraft Model by AB Papercraft

Not only fighter jets MiG-21, MIiG-17, MiG-15, and Tu-16 bombers whose fate was eliminated due to changes in political direction in Indonesia after 1965. There is another type of fighter training jet whose fate must end so quickly in the country. In fact, at that time this fighter jet trainer was very young and modern in its era. This is the Aero L-29 Delfin, or popularly also called the L-29 Dolphin in English.

The existence of this fighter jet was quite large in its time because the Aero L-29 Delfin became a standard military training jet for Warsaw Pact countries in the 1960s. When aligned within the scope of NATO, the L-29 is in the same class as the Hawk jet family from British Aerospace. Uniquely, the L-29 was not made in the Soviet Union but was produced by Aero Vodovochy from Czechoslovakia.

The development of the L-29 was initiated by the Soviet Union's request for a jet-engined trainer aircraft. This request was answered by the company Aero Vodochody. The prototype L-29, codenamed XL-29 first took to the skies on 5 April 1959 and used the Bristol Siddeley Viper engine from the UK.

The Aero L-29 later became the standard jet trainer for the eastern bloc. The first production jet aircraft was delivered in April 1963. Not wanting a western touch, the L-29 was then replaced with the M701 engine, the original Czechoslovak design. Until 1976 Aero continued to produce the L-29 Delfin. A total of 3,500 L-29s have been produced.

The Czechoslovak M701 engine with seven combustion chambers has a thrust of up to 1,960 lbs and a maximum speed of 820 km/h. Notably, the M701 was the first jet engine to have a single-phase centrifugal compressor driven by a single-phase axial flow turbine. The L-29 can be airborne for 2 hours 30 minutes with a range of up to 894 km, using tip tanks on the wings.

The Aero L-29 Delfin has a maximum design for subsonic class aircraft with a tandem seating position with straight wings. The aircraft is capable of carrying two 150 kg drop-tanks, 100 kg bombs, with pods containing either four 67 mm rockets or two 7.62 mm machine gun pods. Maximum speed with full armament underwing reaches Mach 0.7 and Mach 0.75 without weaponry.

Of the 3,500 units produced. 3000 aircraft were sent to the Soviet Union, while the rest were sent to eastern-bloc countries or non-aligned countries that had friendly relations with the Soviet Union, including Egypt, Iraq, and Indonesia.

• Crew: students and instructors

• Length: 10.81 m

• Wingspan: 10.29 m

• Height: 3.13 m

• Wing area: 19.8 m²

• Empty weight: 2280 kg

• Filling weight: 3286 kg (7244 lb)

• Maximum weight at takeoff: 3540 kg

• Engine: 1 × Motorlet M-701C , 8.7 kN (1960 lbf)