Mark Kotoff personal page

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a little about myself These are my personal pages which I understand may or may not be very interesting to all of you. I still working on making them more attractive and informative for everybody. Anyway, I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and currently live in Pennsylvania, USA. Here you can find some information about the city where I was born:      Live view of the St. Isaak Cathedral      Peter and Paul Fortress      live video from Nevsky Prospect (although it may be down from time to time) in St. Petersburg (you might need to download the RealVideo RealPlayer G2) to see the video.      On my recent trip to St. Pet I made a picture of that live video camera (and blow-up here). Location of the camera I became a glider pilot while living in Russia and now enjoy flying here in US, when I can. I have flown the L-13 "Blanik", the Jantar Standard, and the LAK-12 "Lietuva" and took part in the First League Russian National Competition for open class gliders in 1990. And sure enough have competed in all of St. Petersburg’s Competitions from 1987-1990, which was known as Leningrad at that time. OK, that’s enough about me. If you’re a glider pilot or any kind of pilot, for that matter, I’d be glad to hear from you. Drop me a line if you have a chance. Since I am now here in America, I was glad to see the LAK-12 finally coming to the American continent and have talked to some of their owners. They like this glider. It handles very well in the air and has good flying performance. I personally enjoyed every minute flying it. Here is my first impression of LAK-12. However, judging from the models I flew, I'd like to offer some advice to all LAK-12 pilots. Please check the following on your glider: Wing spar should be checked regularly as a preventive maintenance. Manual on how to do it coming soon. Water ballast valve should be greased at least twice a year. Landing gear fork and fuselage internal frame needs to be checked at least once a year for cracks, especially if you’re making off-landings on a regular basis or have rough landings on occasion. (LAK-12 has "Blanik’s" landing gear). Make sure that the canopy lock rods are going deep enough into the fuselage, so the canopy won’t open on you in the air. (it happened to me once while I was taking a picture on the turning point). 500 Hours or 5 Years LAK-12 check-up list (8 pages 385 Kb PDF document) Later on, I’ll post more info and would appreciate anybody’s input about LAK-12 which I promise to post and update as I receive it. Thank you for your time! Mark Kotoff. Polish-built Gliders exported to the Soviet Union - Database

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