Reading up on V[sub]ne[/sub]'s and ran into this regarding 1970's planes:

[i]'parking the fun lever full forward, and waiting'[/i]

They mean the throttle. More modern planes need to throttle-back before something breaks when making sea-level dashes.

[url=http://aviationweek.com/blog/we-didn-t-know-what-90-percent-switches-did]MiG-23 does not have this constraint[/url]. Like the nearly 90% pure-titanium F-4 Phantom II, the frame can park itself fully supersonic on the deck provided its fuel lasts long enough to finish the mission.

[quote]The CIA gave us a flare dispenser from a Frogfoot [Su-25] that had been shot down in Afghanistan. We gave it to maintenance – it was just a thing with wires coming out of it. Four hours later they had it operational on a MiG-21."

That proved to be a very important test. "In 1987 we had the AIM-9P, which was designed to reject flares, and when we used US flares against it would ignore them and go straight for the target. We had the Soviet flares – they were dirty, and none of them looked the same – and the AIM-9P said [i]'I love that flare'.[/i][/quote]

Granted, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GCT-kZGLW0][i]the plane is trying to kill you[/i] every second that you fly it[/url], but still.