As reported earlier, on 12 July 2011 at 4:45 pm an expedition on small flex-wing trikes set off from an airfield near Moscow. The expedition was timed to the 75th anniversary of Valery Chkalov’s flight to the Far East. Alexander Scherbakov, head of TCI’s technical projects, is one of the pilots. Together with the other pilot, Andrey Borisevsky, they follow the route from Moscow to the island of Chkalov on two ultralight trikes whose wings bear the insignia of the official sponsors of the expedition – that is, Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ, Technical Center of Internet and Moscow Internet Exchange (MSK-IX).
To date, the pilots have already made 6,000-plus km, making stops in many cities, including Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, and Chita, among others. Alexander Scherbakov writes in the crew’s blog: “I am flattered to note that we stir interest in almost every place where we stop. We were interviewed in the city of Irkutsk, and in the village of Khorinsk we are very popular with the locals: everyone is curious to know of our route and our flying machines. Everybody knows AN-2 or helicopters; however, people are unfamiliar with an exotic small flex-wing trike.”
En route, the pilots are engaged in educational activities related not only to the small aircrafts but to the logos on the ultralight trikes’ wings . For Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ participation in this flight will be yet another step on the way to promotion of the national domain space across Russian regions and expansion of the use of ccTLDs of the Russian Federation (.RU and .РФ). Thus, in an interview with the Internet portal chita.ru Alexander Scherbakov related about his main job with Technical Center of Internet: “My projects are .RU, .РФ.” The pilots expect that the expedition’s fruits will not be just installing a memorial plaque at the Valery Chkalov’s landing place to commemorate his great flight, but raising awareness of residents of various Russian regions of the national domain space and promotion of the new Cyrillic domain .РФ with Russia’ population.
