"Shen, your pilots showed A1 flight skills and fared perfectly in flight. However, your pilots failed to fly at the preset altitude of 300m but did hedgehopping instead, which might be risky."

　　This was a scene of a joint discussion of the Chinese and Russian army aviation officers in a meeting room of the Shagol Navigation College yesterday morning, and they were commenting on the details of the training. The above opinion was advanced by a Russian colonel to Shen Zhengwen, commander of a Chinese army aviation sub-group as soon as the meeting began.

　　"Thank you for your complement and opinion. But I want to explain that: we did not intentionally to fly against the preset altitude. The reason lies in the fact that the cloud base was only as high as 100-odd meters during training. If we stuck to 300m, we had to fly in the cloud, which, as you know, would put the helicopters on the line. Besides, our pilots have perfect confidence to fly at low altitude, please don't worry," explained Shen Zhengwen.

　　It is learned that the Chinese army aviation troops will take on numerous important tasks during the joint military exercise. They came to Russia late and had only time for one training and one joint rehearsal training so far. Meanwhile, there is a multitude of things to attend to and a host of problems to be solved in the run-up to the formal exercise. For that reason, the Chinese and Russian army aviation troops will have one and even several "joint training discussions" every day to comment on the training.

　　The one-hour meeting of "joint training discussion" was wrapped up, the two sides discussed about 18 problems, such as the time of submitting the flight training plan, and the way of coordination in the next joint rehearsal training, of which 16 were answered then and there and the other two are to be submitted to the higher authority for answers since they involve many factors.

　　By Xu Shuangxi

　　(Aug 10, PLA Daily)