| Author | Message | ||
     Electraglider_1997 |
Pretty motivating and looks kinda like a faster black ULY if it was a jet. http://www.greatdanepromilitary.com/SR-71/index.ht m | ||
| Bienhoabob |
Thanks, nice read. Only thing that could take it out of the sky was budget cuts. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Cool plane, great facts, annoying flash movie  . I hate stuff that forces me to wait for it... I think they still have one of those at Wright Patt Air Force Museum, if you want to go see one "in the flesh". The museum is definitely worth the trip... | ||
| Dr_greg |
OHHHH!!!! MMAANNNN!!!! Sorry for going hypergolic (pun intended) here, but the "Blackbird" is my favorite airplane of ALL TIME! Clarence "Kelly" Johnson will forever be my hero engineer. We've got several books on the SR-71; unfortunately I've never seen one in person. As a grad student near NASA Ames Research Center in Mtn. View, CA, I used to eat my lunch watching the U-2's take off, and wish it were an SR-71. Anything that runs on hypergolic (self-igniting) propellants is too good to ever retire...sigh. That montage was GREAT!! I will forever feel shivers go down my spine every time I see a pic of the SR-71. We shoulda kept a few around...somehow I think we might regret it. --Doc | ||
| Darthane |
Greg, you need to make it out to Dayton, OH on one of your tours. Wright-Patterson has one. They've expanded the museum considerably over the last several years - if you haven't been there in a while I suggest you return. The SR-71 is a MOST impressive aircraft. I've been there many times, and I always spend the most time examining it and the A-10 Thunderbolt II, my personal favorites. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I smell a badweb get together at Wright Patt sometime this summer! | ||
| Stevem123 |
When I was very young I lived at the airbase in Okinawa where the blackbirds operated. The whole island shook when one of those beauties roared to life! Such a beautiful airplane and I think nothing will ever match it or beat it. Fond memories and tears rolling..... BC Steve | ||
| Electraglider_1997 |
I saw them landing and taking off while over in Okinawa back in 76' whilst in the Corps. Impressive to say the least. | ||
| 12x9sl |
Another SR-71 fan here. Got to see one at the EAA air show one year. The shock diamonds in the exhaust stream are awesome! | ||
| Jlnance |
We shoulda kept a few around...somehow I think we might regret it. I bet it has a replacement we don't know about. | ||
| Florida_lime |
We used to make the engines here in West Palm Beach. Now we just do rockets.  | ||
| Desert_uly |
If you make your way to the southern california desert (palmdale to be exact) you can see an SR-71 and a YF12 at the local outdoor air museum along with a few other interesting aircraft. Road trip! | ||
| Court |
>>>annoying flash movie Agreed. Love the plane, got hooked and collected lots of books about it. It was originally the RS-71 and the nomenclature got shuffled. There is one sitting on the West Side Highway that I pass daily and it still fascinates me. The book Skunk Works is a great read. Most amazing thing about the plane is the "idea to first flight" time. | ||
| Road_kill |
Thanks for sharing Electraglider_1997 Like many, I am a big fan of the blackbird. An engineering marvel!! I've been fortunate to see a few at various museums. Would have loved to hear/feel one of them them take off. +1 on the Wright-Patterson USAF museum in Dayton. Every time I'm in town for business, I schedule a few hours to gaze; could spend days - seriously. The most expensive aviation museum ever is free-of-charge to visit (tax dollars never looked so good) Road trip?!? Hmmm, let's see, 770 miles from my house to Wright-Patterson via the tail of the dragon ... | ||
| Waterman |
I remember the first time I saw the SR-71 fly over the place my wife's family use to own. Just across the Yuba river north from Beal AF Station CA.. I thought it was a UFO.  There is one at the Pima Air Museum at Tucson AZ.along with a large collection of other vintage aircraft. I checked it out in January on my four state Southwest tour I made on my Uly. http://www.pimaair.org/index.php | ||
| Sayitaintso |
I've always been a fan of flying and piloting. I don't know how true any of these are but I have been collecting small tidbits of things about flying from various places for a long time. The first is very similar to the one in the slide show and the second is also about the Blackbird. The rest are just funny little clips. In his book, Sled Driver, SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brian Shul writes: I'll always remember a certain radio exchange that occurred one day as Walt (my back-seater) and I were screaming across Southern California 13 miles high. We were monitoring various radio transmissions from other aircraft as we entered Los Angeles airspace. Though they didn't really control us, they did monitor our movement across their scope. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its ground speed. "90 knots" Center replied. Moments later, a Twin Beech required the same. "120 knots," Center answered. We weren't the only ones proud of our ground speed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted, 'Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests ground speed readout.' There was a slight pause, then the response, "525 knots on the ground, Dusty." Another silent pause. As I was thinking to myself how ripe a situation this was, I heard a familiar click of a radio transmission coming from my back-seater. It was at that precise moment I realized Walt and I had become a real crew, for we were both thinking in unison. "Center, Aspen 20, you got a ground speed readout for us?" There was a longer than normal pause .... "Aspen, I show 1,742 knots" No further inquiries were heard on that frequency. -------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- In another famous SR-71 story, Los Angeles Center reported receiving a request for clearance to FL 60 60,000ft. The incredulous controller, with some disdain in his voice, asked, "How do you plan to get up to 60,000 feet? The pilot (obviously a sled driver), responded, "We don't plan to go up to it, we plan to go down to it." He was cleared. ------------------------------------- The pilot was sitting in his seat and pulled out a .38 revolver. He placed it on top of the instrument panel, and then asked the navigator, "Do you know what I use this for?" The navigator replied timidly, "No, what's it for?" The pilot responded, "I use this on navigators who get me lost!" The navigator proceeded to pull out a .45 and place it on his chart table. The pilot asked, "What's that for?" "To be honest sir," the navigator replied, "I'll know we're lost before you will." -------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- More tower chatter: Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!" Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital watches!" -------------------------------------------------- --------------------- One day the pilot of a Cherokee 180 was told by the tower to hold short of the runway while a MD80 landed The MD80 landed, rolled out, turned around, and taxied back past the Cherokee. Some quick-witted comedian in the MD80 crew got on the radio and said, "What a cute little plane. Did you make it all by yourself?" Our hero the Cherokee pilot, not about to let the insult go by, came back with: "I made it out of MD80 parts. Another landing like that and I'll have enough parts for another one." -------------------------------------------------- --------------------- There's a story about the military pilot calling for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter jock that he was number two behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the pilot remarked, "the dreaded seven-engine approach." -------------------------------------------------- --------------------- A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight. While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked, "What was your last known position?" Student: "When I was number one for takeoff." -------------------------------------------------- --------------------- Taxiing down the tarmac, the 757 abruptly stopped, turned around and returned to the gate. After an hour-long wait, it finally took off. A concerned passenger asked the flight attendant, "What was the problem?" "The pilot was bothered by a noise he heard in the engine," explained the flight attendant," and it took us a while to find a new pilot." -------------------------------------------------- --------------------- "Flight 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 degrees." "But Center, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?" "Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?" | ||
| Court |
A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight. While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked, "What was your last known position?" Student: "When I was number one for takeoff." I was flying near Salina, KS one day and hear a "Mayday, Mayday" on a perfect CAVU day. Center came back and asks the guy the nature of the emergency and he explains he's a new student and he doesn't know where he is. After some chatter during which center determined he was carrying nearly a full load of fuel and (hey it's Kansas) within reach of over 100 airports, the controlled told him "Sir, in Kansas you are either North of I-70 or South of I-70". The better one was when my Uncle Astronaut Dr. Craig Fischer had departed from Manhattan, KS for his solo cross country that was to take several hours. He kept trying to find the town that was to be his first stop. He was flying by water towers, trying to get names . . .kept landing "Is this Hoxie?" . . "nope, 12 miles thata way". By the time he got home and made, unintended, his first night landing his instructor had gone home. Scarry thing to think of this guy in a baby blue NASA "play plane" | ||
| Electraglider_1997 |
Sayitaintso, Thanks. It was a long time ago but I recall that when I watched a SR-71 land it would come in nose up about 45 degrees. When they took off they roared like nothing else and the exhaust was excessive and black. | ||
| Sayitaintso |
I've never seen the Blackbird takeoff or land, but I've seen them in static displays. They are awe inspiring (if you know any of the interesting tidbits about them)......Like how un aerodynamic they are, but as the saying goes, if you give anything enough thrust it will fly....even a brick. Or how they leak until they heat up enough from the friction of the air to expand and fill in the "cracks". I have seen both a B-2 and B-1 though, (while in the Army) and those are some incredible flying machines too. | ||
| Hooper |
You can get very close to the SR-71 at the Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Air and Space Annex out by Dulles Airport in Virginia...awesome. They mentioned that very jet in the montage. And just my color... | ||
| Svh |
I too have seen the plane at the Smithsonian at Dulles and it is awesome. The size of it is astonishing especially the turbines. On a work computer so I don't have the pics I took. I was so upset at my dad the last year it came to EAA because he insisted I go with him on a fishing trip instead. The SR-71 wasn't axed due to budget but because of the next project. History channel had a show on about Area 51 about 2 weeks ago that spoke in length about the SR-71. It always amazes me that these planes are flying close to 20 years before we even know about them like the F-117 and B-2 both were developed and flown in the late 70's but didn't become "famous" until the first Gulf war. | ||
| Dennis_c |
The xb70 was a cool plane to. | ||
| Dr_greg |
Man, would you believe I had a private "guided tour" of the AF Museum back in around 1983 by (honest) one of the original X-15 pilots (wish I could remember his name)! I was substituting for the Dean of Engineering at our university. Sad to say, there was no SR-71 in the AF Museum at that time. Other than that, it was an AMAZING place. I would LOOOOVE to go back. However... ...Hmmm, let me get this straight...we ride from the amazing northern NM/southern CO riding area to attend a summer rally in, um, Ohio? Not knocking Ohio, but...really? --Doc | ||
| Riding_tall |
Amazing plane. I wish I could have seen it fly. My Air Force flight was the first flight to have there graduation picture taken in front of the static display SR-71 at Lackland. I though that was cool until I got to kadena and realized I jut missed seeing them fly. People said the night flights were amazing. Every part of them was amazing. Even the starter was a bad MoFo. Not a electric motor or something in the plane but a sled with a big block Chevy and a shaft that was raised up into the plane to start it. Your dealing with some power when a big block is not your motor but your starter !! Amazing engineering. Even more so when you consider “Had the SR-71 been produced today, the feats achieved by Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works team would be amazing. In the 1960’s the results were unbelievable. Virtually all the calculations in the engineering process of the SR-71 were done by hand with a slide rule.” - From an article on the University of Wisconsin-Madison web page. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
The SR was in the air shortly after Powers was shot down in the U2, of course it was a NASA experimental research plane.... The next new thing has been out 20 years, we will hear rumors of it in 5 | ||
| Xbimmer |
There's a SR-71 on display at Castle Air Museum off Hwy 99 in central CA, along with several other awesome aircraft including a B-36, one of my favorites. My first chance to actually see them up close was just after they mothballed them, at Beale AFB CA. We were up north in Nevada City visiting my inlaws when I read that Beale was having an airshow that week, in the middle of the week no less. Tossed my young son into the van and headed out to Beale. I was completely stoked when we got there. B-1's, U-2's, two SR-71's on the ground one cordoned off for close appraisal and one on the runway, and lots of other Air Force stuff. We got to see a U-2 do a very short takeoff then a radical upward climb, and a B-52 do a high speed pass about 300 ft off the runway, nose down and wings canting up at the tips. Then the Blackbird demos. The one on the runway stayed there but a third came in (relatively) slowly and as it passed the exhausts pulsed those huge orange spheres when he kicked it. The sound was incredible. He made a BIG turn and came by again higher up then headed up, way up. Some time later they announced the Blackbird was going to give us a high speed demo, IIRC 30000 ft but speed classified. We looked up in the direction we were told, and at the front tip of what was the fastest moving contrail I've ever seen was a tiny black speck. Then the sonic boom. Then the applause. Amazing experience. | ||
| Darthane |
...Hmmm, let me get this straight...we ride from the amazing northern NM/southern CO riding area to attend a summer rally in, um, Ohio? Not knocking Ohio, but...really? Yeah, yeah, I know. You could stop there just 'passing through' on your way into the Appalachians, though. There are some really nice roads an hour or so east of WPAFB. Ask XB9 to give you a tour.  | ||
| Dr_greg |
You lucky son-of-a-gun! I'd have loved to have been there... --Doc | ||
| Dr_greg |
I would actually love to do that, but there's this thing called work (even for us pointy-headed professors). Wait till my house is paid off, then I'll have more summer vacation time. --Doc | ||
| Xbimmer |
You lucky son-of-a-gun! I'd have loved to have been there... I was very lucky in fact. The only reason I suspected a local air show happened this way. My mother-in-law's husband built his house at the end of the highest paved road on the mountain above Nevada City, high enough that the local fire dept kept their radio equipment on his property because they could get to it if need be in rainy weather. The house had a living room with a 40ft section of windows allowing a very panoramic view of the valley and mountains beyond. When we arrived there as I carried our bags in I looked out the living room windows and saw jets flying through the valley at virtually eye level! Being the aircraft nut that I am I ran out to the deck and watched as they made a couple of passes, they were Thunderbird F-16's. Figuring they had to be there for a show coming up, I grabbed the stack of newspapers and found out that Beale was having the show on that Wednesday (IIRC). I thought it odd to have an air show in the middle of the week but it worked out for me, we would have been back home by the next w/e and missed it all, Blackbirds and everything. | ||
| Paul56 |
My brother-in-law was building a building at Burbank Airport when the Blackbird was officially retired. He didn't see the ceremony but did see the takeoff, low speed pass then final salute as it went to burners and headed to the Smithsonian. The flight made the newscasts here and quite an impression on my brother-in-law (who is not an aviation guy). As an A&P I was insanely jealous. Kelly Johnson ranks with DaVinci in my book. What a genius! | ||
| Dr_greg |
My son (as well as myself) are SR-71 enthusiasts. I gave him the link to the original montage. He enjoyed it, and found this expanded coverage of the "ground airspeed check"...it's quite enjoyable reading. SR-71 Groundspeed Check --Doc | ||
| Hughlysses |
The Blackbird is truly an awesome piece of engineering. One thing nobody's mentioned, is that much of the design for this plane was done in the late 1950's. Imagine that- no personal computers, no CAD, etc. They were inventing new technology from scratch as they went along and using drafting boards and slide rules to do it all. I heard a tale from a former Northrop employee I used to work with. He went to work for Northrop right out of college in the late 50's. Shortly after he started work his team was tasked with designing an aircraft hydraulic control system to meet very stringent parameters one of which was tolerance to very high temperatures. They were evidently given the absolute minimum "need to know" information. The problem they ran into was there was nowhere to "dump" the heat, and temperatures would far exceed what the available fluids could tolerate. They hit on the idea of using the aircraft's fuel as the medium in the hydraulic system. This allowed "fresh", relatively cool fuel to be routed through the hydraulics, and then burned in the engines where the heat was effectively dumped out of the aircraft. They completed their design and that's the last they heard of it. This guy claimed that many years later, when the SR-71 was revealed to the public, he realized that this HAD to be the aircraft that hydraulic system wound up in. True? I don't know, but it's a good story. |
