Category: Featured

The Unknown Sikh Soldier in the Kargil War

Anil Goyal

 ..in the Kargil war I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was the 23rd May 1999, the Kargil conflict was ongoing. My crew and I were in Awantipur to pick up 24 casualties (20 sitting & 4 on stretchers) the casualties were seriously wounded. The age of the passengers ranged between 19-27 years. Some had deep bullet wounds, where the bullet had gone through, but he still had his legs and could sit, stand, walk, and wasn’t on a stretcher. The men who were on a stretcher were the badly…

Celebrating 100 Blog Posts!

Anil Goyal

What is blogging? It’s just like publishing a short story regularly, especially for creative writers. People blog about different things: politics, relationships, finance, health and wellness, personal life, history and so on. Some people do it for fun. Others make money through blogging. Most bloggers lives revolve around finding the next topic for their blog post. But one thing they learn very swiftly is to focus on their readers. The target audience. They are like a bunch of people you were able to convince but moment your content deteriorates, they…

Fighter Strike Leader of IAF

Anil Goyal

“Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely.”  Col. Ardant du Picq Through two world wars, as technology improved, modern war has become more and more reliant on airpower. Tactics are continuously evolved and modified for quick success in aerial combat as well as for victorious strike mission. Did you ever wonder, how a group of fighter aircraft are forged into lethal weapons?…

Clear Air Turbulence

Anil Goyal

The pollution debate, the winter SMOG and the spike in COVID-19 cases keep us engrossed in our daily lives. Living on Earth, the air we breathe and the birds and clouds we see, limit our world to a few hundred or maybe a few thousand feet above the surface. We rarely imagine about the events that take place above the world so high in the upper atmosphere. Not until one embarks on air travel and the aeroplane shakes a little because of “turbulence”. Mostly, this turbulence is associated with the…

My First Flight as a Trainee Pilot (Flight Cadet)

Anil Goyal

 “Sometimes, flying feels too God-like to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see.” Charles A. Lindbergh Growing up in India in the 1980s that too in tier II city, I would have been lucky if I got a chance to travel on a plane. Almost every child I had met, dreamt about becoming a pilot. Maybe this was just because we wanted to fly and reach the clouds above, or because we saw in cartoons and…

Light Transport Aircraft: Saras

Anil Goyal

Named Saras, after the Indian crane known for its grace and beauty in flight, the Light Transport Aircraft (LTA) has the design objective of being able to carry between eight and 14 passengers and extendable to an 18-passenger variant, in multiple modes of operation.  The flight-testing expertise and resources in India have matured adequately to undertake prototype flight-testing. The Light Transport Aircraft (LTA) program, SARAS a turboprop aircraft being developed indigenously by National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) of Government of India, is the first civil aircraft program aimed at certification standard,…