Centinary of Man's first flight

Hi all today the stamp sheet I want to talk about is the set of four stamps released by Indian postal dept to commemorate the centenary of man's first flight. (Feminists kindly note that usage of words as per postal dept!)

The four flying machines pictured in the sheet are :

• HT-2
• Marut
• LCA
• Dhruv

Lets get into a bit of details. The thing to note about all of these is the fact that all of them were made by the Indian institution Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL)

I don't think I want to incorporate choppers in my collection, but seeing as they managed to sneak in on the back of the three planes, lets start with the Dhruv. The Wiki does speak a lot about the dhruv. The Dhruv is an advanced light Helicopter and the programmes for developing it began way back in 1984 and the deliveries finally began in 2002. One of the only three Helicopter display teams in the world, the Sarang of the Indian Air force performs with four of these machines.

The HT-2 as it is popularly called is actually the "Hindustan Trainer 2". I have already written a lot about the HT-2 in my other blog "My Daddy Strongest" , so I won't go into all that again.

In my opinion the HF24 Marut and the LCA have not really been great success's of the HAL. You can read up more about them at Wiki and at the bharat rakshak website. Some would actually debate the fact that the Indian govt actually felt it appropriate to showcase their failures.

But the way I look at it, if you pump in millions of dollars of money to get something that flies, the least you can get out of them is a couple of postage stamps!


(PS: I do realise that the stamp in my picture is a little damaged. A much better one is framed on one of the walls.)