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 On February 10, 2005 the Ramenskoye airfield became the place of the new world record of the 1-seat gas airship Au-11 of the BA-02 subclass (according to the FAI classification, the envelope volume from 400 to 900 cu. m ). The pilot-in-command Leonid Putintsev (Korolyov) established the world record in speed. Take-off was made at 13.03 and landing at 13.20; the airship passed over marked runway 4 times. Official sports commissioners enrolled a record result - 50.03 km per hour.
The strong side wind degraded the result," Leonid Putintsev said, "However, the very presence of this class of aircraft in the FAI record register will give a new horizon for aeronauts." The Au-11 airship with a volume of 668 cu. m is a prototype acting as a training craft for airship pilots and a testing ground for optimization of operation of airships designed by the Augur Aeronautical Centre on request from the Moscow Government. These airships, together with three aerostats, will monitor Moscow traffic beginning from May of 2005, preventing road jams.
The International Federation of Aeronautics (FAI) with the headquarters in Lausanne (Switzerland) has not yet registered any records of the BA-02 airships, and the record of Leonid Putintsev constitutes a precedent for this subclass which, along with the Olympic glory, contributes to the status of Russia.
This new record is another breakthrough after Nikolay Galkin who became the first world record-holder from Russia and two sportswomen and record-holders Natalia Volodicheva and Yekaterina Kochetkova whose record was accepted by the FAI just a few days ago, on February 7, 2005; and, all in all, the 37-year-old aeronaut Leonid Putintsev became the fifth Russian recordsman.
Another attempt to increase the Russian presence in the FAI record register was made by two aeronauts on the AV-1 hot-air airship of the BX-4 subclass (envelope volume 1600- 3000 cu. m ), the one which set the world record in speed on February 7, 2005. The crew of the two-seat airship including the pilot-in-command Valery Shkulenko (Khimki) and pilot-navigator Alexey Mitrofanov (Moscow) established a national record in speed and stopped within a few steps from the world record which, from December of 2003, belongs to the Englishman David Hempleman-Adams: 25.71 km per hour on the Cameron Balloons DP-70 hot-air airship.
The flight results were recorded by official observers - sports commissioners of the Russian Federation of Air Sports the General Secretary of the Russian Federation of Air Sports Sergey Kiselyov and Yuri Vetrov - with the help of ground registering instrumentation. The flight was performed at an altitude of about 50 metres and controlled by the deputy chief of the flight-test base of the Myasishchev pilot engineering plant the test-pilot and aerostatic vehicles inspector Vitaly Selivanov. Joint efforts of ground services and the process of flight were coordinated by the record-holder Nikolay Galkin.
Record registration procedure consists of two stages: first it must be registered in a national organization, namely Russian Federation of Air Sports, after which the claim goes to the FAI to be registered as a world record. At the moment all the necessary documents are being registered at the Russian Federation and then they will be sent to Switzerland.
The record flight was organized by the Augur Aeronautical Centre, Russian Federation of Aeronautics and Russian Aeronautic Society in cooperation with the Gromov research institute. In the near future Russian sportsmen are planning several attempts of new world records on airships.
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