Antonov An-2

The Fat Cat

Photography by Jay Selman

First Impressions:  It is widely known that the Antonov Company is famous for its production of large airplanes, such as the 1,410,000 pound, six-engine An-225 Mriya (may she rest in peace).  Although the An-2 is a single engine biplane (NATO callsign “Colt”), this “baby” Antonov is massive! The 12,000-pound max gross weight makes it the world’s largest production single engine biplane. 

History: Oleg Antonov was a Russian aircraft designer who was, at one time, the lead design engineer for the Yakovlev Design Bureau.  During WWII, he designed both the successful A-7 troop-carrying glider and the fanciful, but unsuccessful, A-40 tank glider (a T-60 light tank with discardable wood and fabric wings and tail).  From 1943 to the end of the war, he primarily worked on the Yak-3 fighter series.  His success within Yakovlev led him to receive his own design bureau, named (with true Soviet imagination) “Light Aircraft Forming Bureau 153”. More commonly, it became known as the Antonov Design Bureau and was eventually moved to Kyiv, Ukraine. 

The USSR, being a vast nation, needed a rugged utility aircraft to provide access to its many extremely remote locations.  The first assignment of the newly formed Antonov Design Bureau was for a light utility aircraft intended for forestry and agricultural purposes.  The result was a design so utilitarian, it remained in production for 54 years!  The slow, but sturdy airplane was, and still is, used as an airliner, cropduster, paratrooper plane, air ambulance, floatplane, skiplane, fire bomber, and more.   Its STOL performance with huge load-capacity and easy-to-fly characteristics strongly contributed to its longevity, making it the “Kalashnikov” of airplanes.

Todd Schultz, corporate pilot and owner of the Golden Age Flight Museum in Bakersfield, California, acquired his 1977 An-2 in 2020.  He affectionately calls his beast “The Fat Cat”.  One of the strangest aircraft modifications I have seen is the 12 air-powered train horns mounted on the belly of his gigantic Antonov.  When I asked why, Todd answered, “Why not?”  Because the plane is certified in the U.S. as Experimental Exhibition, it can’t be used for any commercial purposes.  And frankly, what’s more American than taking a former Soviet aircraft and installing an air compressor and 12 train horns? As you might guess, it sounds like a flying freight train! 

Design Characteristics: If ever a plane was built for self-sustaining utility, the An-2 was it.  The places in which it was designed to operate were often hundreds of miles from any support, so the designers included some ingenious and practical features to negate the need for support equipment.  A few examples are: (1) air hoses located behind panels in the nose and tail to refill the tires with compressed air from the accumulator; (2) an electric pump in the bottom of the cowling to allow a hose to siphon fuel from a drum positioned beneath the nose; (3) a quick-drain oil reservoir method (engine oil can be drained at the end of a flight, heated over a stove in the morning and poured back in the reservoir when ready for the next day’s flight in sub-zero Siberian winters).

One of the most incredible (but unverified) features of the Colt involves the threaded “nubs” at the tip of the top wings (which have a longer wingspan than the lower wings).  Should an An-2 need an engine replacement far from any support, a spare engine can be loaded in another An-2 and flown to the rescue.  An eyebolt is threaded into the nub and a block and tackle is attached and used to hoist the spare engine out of the other An-2.  Then by maneuvering and repositioning the two airplanes, the engines can be swapped without the use of an engine hoist! 

Powerplant: The wooden four-bladed, constant speed prop diameter measures in at just under 12 feet.  Behind this massive prop is a 9-cylinder, supercharged Shvetsov PZL ASz-62 radial engine. This engine is a licensed Polish-built copy of the Russian ASh-62, which is an upgraded Shvetsov M-25, which, in turn, is a Soviet license-built copy of the Wright R-1820-F3 Cyclone.  More simply put, it’s a Russian-built R-1820, boosted from 720 to 1000-horsepower.  Each upper wing has three tanks that supply a total of 320 gallons of fuel.  At takeoff power, “The Fat Cat” drinks 110 gallons per hour with cruise power consumption being about 43 gph.

Start/Taxi/Takeoff:  If you have a recently-imported An-2, make sure to translate everything to English.  Not everything is intuitive.  On the mixture control lever, aft is rich and forward is lean. Also, full lean will not kill the engine.  There is a separate lever on the panel to completely shut off fuel to the engine.  The magneto lever is turned all the way left to select “both”.  When ready to start, open the air pressure valve located behind the pilot’s left elbow, and then prime the cylinders and manifold with ten shots of prime and ten pump actuations with the fuel wobble pump.  Toggle the inertial starter switch left to “electric engage”.  After hearing the high-pitched inertial starter stabilize at max rpm, toggle the switch right to “auto engage.” If the “auto engage” doesn’t work, you can manually pull a T-handle to engage the clutch.  The huge four-bladed prop will rapidly engage and, hopefully, start coughing and belching.  If not, repeat the process until successful. 

After starting, there is a whole series of switches, valves, levers and cranks to set before taxi.  Taxiing “The Fat Cat” requires the use of a yoke-mounted lever that actuates the pneumatic brake on the side where the rudder pedal is depressed.  The tailwheel is free-castoring.  The giant Antonov will lurch, hiss, groan and growl as “the beastmaster” (aka pilot) does their best to cajole the behemoth toward the runway.  As unwieldy as it is on the ground, 770 square feet of wing area greatly reduces the coaxing required to get this Fat Cat to fly.  With no cargo or passengers on board, it will be airborne in under 300 feet of ground roll. 

Photography by Jay Selman

Flight Characteristics:  12,000 pounds of drag is a lot of mass to move around without assisted flight controls.  While simple to fly, this plane does take some muscle, especially in turbulence.  It flies like a dump truck with wings, which, essentially, it is.  Rolling the An-2 into a turn is best accomplished with both hands on the W-shaped control yokes.  All four wings have pushrod-controlled flaps and ailerons that droop with the flaps.  Whether cruising at a blistering 90-mph or in slow flight at 44-mph with full flaps, aileron droop and leading edge slats deployed, the roll control forces are about the same - heavy.  Elevator control is comparatively light.  I imagine that An-2 cropduster pilots must have huge shoulder and quad muscles from yanking and banking their machine all day. 

An interesting note in the Emergency Procedures portion of the pilot’s manual is the recommendation to deploy full flaps, turn into the wind, and hold the yoke full back if experiencing an engine failure at night or in IMC with unknown terrain below. The An-2 will touch down at a “parachute descent rate”, which offers a very survivable option in a bad situation. 

Landing:  Flaps are deployed with a thumb button on the throttle and are retracted with another button on the console aft of the throttle.  Carb heat is applied by moving a lever forward.  As you slow to around 58-mph, you’ll feel a “bang”.  Don’t be alarmed. This sound is created as the full-span leading edge slats deploy on the top wings.  The lumbering beast is quite stable on approach.  The pilot’s eye height is about 13 feet above the ground, so remember to flare early.  The oleo-strut gear was made to absorb some pretty austere landing strips, so even ugly landings are forgiven.  Because the An-2 has no toe brakes, if a little braking is needed during landing rollout, squeeze the air brake handle on the yoke to send compressed air to the side on which the rudder pedal is applied.  Like everything else in aviation, practice produces good muscle memory. 

Wrap-Up:  Love it or hate it, the An-2 is one of the most successful aircraft ever manufactured.  More than 18,000 were built in Russia, China and Poland between 1947 and 2001, and this run is even more impressive when considering it is a radial-engine biplane with fabric wings still used in a modern era.  There is little doubt that gainfully employed An-2s will still be chugging along at 100 years old.  So, the next time you hear a freight train flying above, look up and tip your hat at “The Fat Cat”!

Photography by Jay Selman