Despite all stories, this Russian made "Tupolev" aircraft, turned out to be an excellent machine, especially when maintained and flown by Chinese people!
Left to right: Carl Johannink, Romke Schievink, Arnold Tukkers, Robert Haas and Marco Langbroek.
The large sanddunes are part of the southern ridge of the Gobi desert.
Now we now, that Russian technicians develope fine aircrafts.
And when maintained by Chinese personel you have a great plane.
Mainly visited by important Chinese people, and occasionally foreigners like us.
The Qinghai hotel is quite luxurious and can be well compared with western hotels like the Hilton.
Counterclockwise around the table are: Jos Nijland, Arnold Tukkers, Carl Johannink, Romke Schievink, Marc de Lignie, Robert Haas, Marco Langbroek and Koen Miskotte.
From left to right are: Romke Schievink, Casper ter Kuile, Marc de Lignie, Marco Langbroek, Jos Nijland, Arnold Tukkers, Robert Haas and sitting down our Chinese truckdriver, Carl Johannink and Koen Miskotte.
Our Chinese counterpart arranged a nice and welcome meal in the middle of the desert in this little village.
Notice that the major part of the house is below ground level.
Well... we now know that the Qinghai desert is not at all empty.
Lots of yaks and sheep are walking around and are herded by nomads.
Teammembers (left to right): Romke Schievink, Marc de Lignie, Robert Haas (kneeling), Zhao Haibin, Arnold Tukkers, Marco Langbroek, Jos Nijland, Koen Miskotte, Lei Chengming, Casper ter Kuile (kneeling) and Carl Johannink.
Equipment (left to right): Image intensifier system of Romke Schievink, 50 mm and 85 mm camerabattery of Robert Haas, wide angle image intensifier system of Marc de Lignie, power generator, 85 mm and 50 mm camera battery of Casper ter Kuile, image intensifier system of Carl Johannink and Casper ter Kuile.
This building was used by roadworkers who build the new main road from Xining to Delingha.
We set up our equipment at the left hand side of the platform.
Visual observers chose a location most suitable with respect to the winddirection and the viewing direction.
Top center is the image intensifier system, at left the auxiliary materials flightcase, to the right of the image intensifier is its flightcase, at far right the 85 mm photographic project, at right center the 50 mm photographic project, at the bottom is the top-casing of the 50 mm project.
All equipment is powered by a power generator, which is located at the other side of the compound.
Each night temperatures dropped to -15 / -20 degrees centigrade, which proved to be rather cold.
So first thing to do when getting out of the warm truck, was setting up all equipment as quickly as possible.
From left to right: one of the 50 mm projects consisting of 11 Canon T-70's equipped with 1.8/50 mm lenses, both 85 mm projects consisting of 5 Canon T-70's equipped with 1.8/85 mm lenses.
To obtain a high accuracy the 6 and 8 blade sectors have been cut by laser.
This mounting followed the stars and Robert mounted 2 camera's on it which made nice pictures.
From left to right: the 50 mm project, the 85 mm project, the video-flightcase and the image intensifier.
The photographical systems are set up by Robert Haas, the image intensifier by Romke Schievink.
Every film and cassette is marked with camera number, date and location (Delingha or Ulan).
The computed geographical coordinates are correct to about 50 meters which corresponds to about 2 arcseconds.
From left to right are: Robert Haas, Zhao Harbin, Romke Schievink, Marco Langbroek, Jos Nijland, Marc de Lignie, Carl Johannink, Arnold Tukkers and Koen Miskotte.
Please wait for more pictures taken at the farewell party.
Left to right: Arnold Tukkers, Carl Johannink, Robert Haas, Marco Langbroek, Marc de Lignie, Romke Schievink, Jos Nijland and Zhao Harbin.
