PZL TS-11 Iskra
The Spark
“Poland's own jet trainer, and the first jet many Polish pilots ever flew.”
PZL Mielec · military
Iskra means spark in Polish, and the TS-11 was Poland's answer to buying trainers from Moscow: a home-designed jet with a straight wing, a pod-and-boom fuselage and the engine exhausting under the tail. It beat the Czech L-29 in Warsaw Pact trials, and India bought it too. The Polish Air Force kept flying it into the 2020s, and a growing number have reached private owners in the United States.
The Iskra served the Polish Air Force for nearly 60 years, from 1964 into the 2020s, longer than almost any jet trainer in the world.
Straight wing, a high T-tail on a slim boom, and the jet exhaust underneath the boom rather than at the back. The intakes are at the wing roots.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Spark from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
