AVIATION: Praga Alfa Hard-worker of the skies

of To fulfill this job, it was designed with maximum versatility in mind. If there’s no suitable dry place to land, it can be equipped with amphibious floats, allowing it to operate both from airfields and lakes, rivers or seas. This comes especially handy in heavily forested areas like many parts of Canada or Alaska – or large portions of Russia.

JACK OF ALL TRADES

The versatility, of course, is not just about the ability to land or take-off almost anywhere. The Praga Alfa is also designed to carry a vast variety of loads. Its interior can be equipped to serve many different needs. In its base configuration, it is able to carry a pilot, five passengers and their luggage.Naturally, it is also possible to take out the seats (or some of them) and fly with up to 900 kilograms of cargo - or you can order your Praga Alfa in the MEDEVAC version, with two stretchers, 4 seats for patients and one for the doctor.

With the optional under-fuselage pod, the plane’s capabilities are increased even further. It can be configured for various uses, from simple cargo storage to more complex tasks like fire-fighting or photogrammetry. The Praga Alfa can be also used for cropdusting, as a tow plane for gliders or for skydiving, with space for up to 10 skydivers and the ability to climb to 4,200 metres and land again in 15 minutes.

All of this makes the Praga Alfa a perfect plane for operators in remote areas, who have to cope with all of the various jobs at hand with just one plane.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY IN A RUGGED PACKAGE

One of the most important goals of the Alfa’s development was to offer ruggedness and robustness similar to, or even better than, that of all its classic competitors, but at the same time provide the latest technologies on board.

From the beginning, the Praga Alfa was designed to require as little care and maintenance as possible, allowing its operators to focus on more important issues than caring for the plane.

At the same time, the plane’s technology was upgraded to the latest standards. Besides the modern turboprop engine, the Praga Alfa is also outfitted with state-of-the-art avionics. The “glass display” replaces traditional gauges with a set of large displays. Those provide all the information the pilot needs for their work, from basic stats of the airplane to things like navigation. The operators have a choice between systems made by Garmin, Avidyne or Honeywell, and they can have their cockpit set up to suit their specific needs.

With the combination of its abilities, the Praga Alfa is uniquely suited to take over from admired classics like the Pilatus PC-6, the DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver or the Antonov An-2 and become the perfect tool for those who need their planes to do some really hard work. Currently, the plane is going through the process of EASA certification and it is expected to go into production soon.

PRAGA V3S:

The Unstoppable Truck

Produced for almost half a century, Praga V3S is one of the greatest products in the history of Praga trucks. What made it so great that even now, almost 70 years after it was created, it’s still used in both civilian and military applications?

It was never known for being comfortable, fast or easy to drive. Quite the opposite - it was slow even by the standards of the 1950s and driving it required both skill and strength. The cabin was filled with engine roar; it was cold during winter and searing hot in the summer. The V3S didn’t care about being nice to its driver. It was all about doing the hard work, taking heavy loads to places most other trucks couldn’t go. Even now, it still does that job.

The decades-long career of theV3S is even more striking when compared to the time it took to develop it. In 1951, when work on the new truck began, there wasn’t time to waste or spare. The Czechoslovak army’s truck fleet was in shambles. It was made up of a smattering of pre-war trucks, captured German trucks, Soviet trucks and also American trucks supplied as part of the UNRRA program. Praga was also supplying the new RN and A 150 trucks, but those were adapted civilian types, not built for the tough off-road work of a military truck.

A solution was needed, and it was needed fast. Above all, the army needed a medium truck that would be able to carry 5 tons on the road and 3 tons in off-road conditions. The requirements, issued in June 1951, called for three axles – all of them powered – 550 mm of ground clearance, 65 km/h top speed, great off-road capabilities and, of course, reliability, cheap production and simple maintenance.

The first prototype was expected to be built by the end of the year. After Praga’s engineers worked tirelessly around the clock and through weekends, they succeeded. They had yet to find a suitable engine, as the originally planned Tatra T908 air-cooled five-cylinder diesel was lacking in both power (90 hp instead of expected 100 hp) and reliability. Still, the truck was ready and after it was provisionally fitted with Praga’s own N5T engine,the tests could begin.

The army pitted it against both the Soviet ZiS 151 and the American Studebaker US6, plus its Czechoslovak competitor, the Tatra 128. From the start, the Praga V3S displayed what its greatest strength would be in the future. With the portal axles, it offered unprecedented ground clearance, and six wheels, four of them dually-mounted combined with relatively low weight of just over 5 tons, helped it cope with soft surfaces where heavier trucks floundered.

To cut a long story short, the new Praga was declared the winner and recommended for mass production. Of course, the hastily- -developed prototype had some minor flaws and certain modifications were required. Differential locks were added, a winch was fitted to the front of the truck and the fuel tanks were moved from under the seats into the frame. The truck was ready; all it needed was the right engine.

After the originally planned T908 was pronounced dead on arrival, Tatra promised to design and build a new engine by the mid1952. The result was called the T912. While it retained Tatra’s signature air cooling, it was quite a bit bigger than its predecessor. Essentially one half of the massive T103 V12 engine, it gained one cylinder and almost a litre of displacement. A 7.4-litre six cylinder engine produced 98 horsepower and 353 Nm of torque.

While the V3S certainly wasn’t a fast truck even with the new engine, it was perfectly able to perform its expected duties. The army signed it off for mass production, and work also began on civilian versions. Over the course of 37 years (production ended in 1990), some 135 thousand trucks were built.

The V3S was exported all around the world, serving both military and civilian purposes – the Czechoslovak army alone had several dozen variations. There were Pragas with beds, dumpers or box trucks that could be outfitted for any type of service, from ambulances to mobile workshops, labs or radio trucks. Others were outfitted as cranes, fire trucks or, quite commonly in Czechoslovakia, as fecal sludge trucks.

Among the more specialised variants were some military applications. There were mobile landing light versions for the air force, and the trucks specially converted to clear the runways – using jet engines from old fighter planes. The most extreme modification, though, was called vz. 53/59 “Ještěrka” (lizard). By adding armour and twin 30 mm autocannons, the V3S was transformed into a mobile piece of anti-aircraft artillery.

The V3S was well-known all over the world for its simple, durable construction and extreme off-road capabilities. In Czechoslovakia, it was much more than just “well-known”. For decades, these trucks formed not only the backbone of the army. They were massively popular and basically irreplaceable in civilian life as well. The V3S essentially built post-war Czechoslovakia and kept it moving. In some ways, it continues to do so to this day, as many of them are still actively working.