A-Model 72174 1:72 HAI-1

Details

A-Model 72174 1:72 HAI-1

In 1933 Kharkov aircraft manufacturers also worked on the bomber K-13 and the passenger aircraft K-14. The flying characteristics of these aircraft turned out to be far from excellent, the interest to them had declined, and these projects were cancelled. Here we should probably also mention another aircraft, HAI-1, even though it was designed by Kharkov Aviation Institute students separately from Kalinin’s design bureau and built by HAZ aviation enthusiasts. Back in the thirties the aircraft speed was increasing from one modification to another steadily but very slowly (thus, from 1929 to 1931 it had increased only by 10 km/h, from 190 to 200 km/h). Young Kharkov engineer I. Neman, who was at that time a head of one of Kharkov Aviation Institute departments, was genuinely interested in solving this problem and substantially increasing the aircraft speed. He gathered a group of talented aviation students and set about designing a new aircraft that would fly faster than any other aircraft of that time. The Neman’s group had designed HAI-1, a low-wing monoplane with a cantilevered wing and a retractable landing gear, an absolute technical innovation for that time. HAZ workers decided to build HAI-1 without any financial compensation, in their free time. The airplane was built within an absolutely record-breaking period of 180 days. The first trial flight of HAI-1 took place in October 1932, and in January 1933 the pilot had first retracted the landing gear in flight increasing the speed by 40 km/h. On January 30 the aircraft flew with 292 km/h speed which had brought it to the first place in Europe and second in the world among the speedy passenger airplanes. In spring 1933 this airplane went into production even though the state tests were not over yet