111–120 of 141 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to denigrate OP, but this reduced version has become a bit of a copypasta meme of its own.
Essentially it’s like JPEG pictures: the quality degrades the more times it’s being shared.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you know how some people have a talent for story-telling, painting vivid landscapes and heroic deeds with words and prose? you have a talent for story-telling, but sort of from the opposite end of the spectrum; you sucked all of the heroism and bravado out of the story without actually misrepresenting any of the facets of it. nice work.
Some people, which includes me, think this parody captures the cringeworthy-ness of the original. It always sounded so fake to me. Even if someone proved it did happen. That's not because I don't think pointy planes are cool! I went to a school with an F-104 lawn ornament.
Maybe because it’s a polished story that he told over and over? Maybe one of the planes was an added embellishment to make the story longer?
The last part is the most plausible- that they would do an unnecessary speed check as a joke to tweak a pilot of a different armed service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people, which includes me, think this parody captures the cringeworthy-ness of the original. It always sounded so fake to me. Even if someone proved it did happen. That's not because I don't think pointy planes are cool! I went to a school with an F-104 lawn ornament.
I find comments like this interesting - what is so implausible about this? It’s just a bit of radio chatter, nothing amazing happens, just a funny anecdote that a pilot tells when speaking to an audience. Maybe because it’s a polished story that he told over and over? Maybe one of the planes was an added embellishment to make the story longer? The last part is the most plausible- that they would do an unnecessary spe…
That's an interesting question. I'm not a pilot, I haven't spent a lot of time listening to pilots talk, and I have no specific thing to point to that is definitively impossible. I have no reductionist explanation.
There might indeed be a core that was embellished. If so, then I think it was overdone.
Real things that happen can be unbelievable; I've had the experience of telling a true story that people completely refuse to believe. But this story is believable to many, so it doesn't seem to go in the same bucket.
Stories that get repeated a lot get tweaked along the way, eventually to their detriment. If something was originally a good story, then it's easier to make it worse than better.
Stick and Rudder is the best read out there if you want an intuitive pilots understanding of what happened here. It unpacks angle of attack from a pilots perspective rather than using engineer speak. At that speed the control surfaces of the Blackbird would have had very little effect which is incredibly scary as you’re approaching a stall low and slow. They’d need big deflections to keep her straight and it would ha…
Is what you're referring to here called coffin corner? Or is that something else?
SR-71 speed check One time we were going fast a small plane got on the radio and said "how fast am i going" the tower said "you are going fast" and then a bigger plane got on the radio and said "haha i think i am going faster how fast am i going" and the tower said "you are going a little faster" and then a jet fighter was going really fast and talked like a really cool guy and said "hey there, I sound like a cool gu…
For reference, this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SR71/comments/2dpmw7/the_sr71_speed... is a story that amateur jet fighter enthusiasts have copy-pasted to every edge of the internet, to the point of everyone cringing when they see it.
You can read anything you want about the SR-71, but nothing compares to actually seeing it in person. It is my single favorite engineered object. It's in the Dulles Air and Space museum. Go see it, if you can. You won't regret it.
It's amazing how large of a vehicle it is in person. It's got to be twice the size of the F18 in front of the science center. It still looks like a spacecraft from the future even though it's nearly 70 years old.
I find these stories hard to believe. An expensive top secret spy plane that is hard to fly, requires boatloads of fuel and maintenance allowed to make a detour for a joy ride flyby?
Turns out pilots and the whole chain is still full of humans who at times like “cool” stuff.
sounds like he was at the knife's edge of the stall speed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A testament to the plasticity of the human mind. Like getting (and losing) "sea legs". You walk your whole life on solid land; now you don't for a few days and your freaky brain figures it out. You're a kid and you don't know anything about boats, but you take the job parking the rentals. By the end of the summer, they move to your whim. But steerage at slow speed is a tricky subject. I had a trawler I was terrified…
Boats are tough. I have to bring my sailboat under two draw bridges each winter. It is always a little too exciting, especially if you are unlucky enough to get stuck between the bridges which are really close together!
Here in NL we have a type of mast that can be dropped under sail and re-set right after crossing under a bridge. This is a pretty exciting operation best practiced a large number of times without the presence of a bridge before you try it for real. Failures tend to be fairly spectacular.
Here a demo on a very small boat, I've seen this done with a big Tjalk and that was most impressive (but I can't find any video of that):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTwGCPgCsII
With a big ship it will look like an accident is about to happen until the last moment when the sail drops, the mast gets dropped backwards and they are barely out from under the bridge on the far side or the whole operation happens in reverse resulting in very little lost speed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maneuvering a regular (stern) driven boat without a bow screw at low speeds is super hard. There is this 10 year old kid at a marina near where I live that handles all of the rental boats, I've seen them do this in absolutely impossible situations with a grace and skill that really blows my mind, it's like the boat is on rails and does exactly what they want it to do. Even the box shaped 'party boats', and those are…
This reminds me of something I had completely forgotten: many years ago, we spent a week cruising an English canal in a narrowboat, which have the basic setup of a fixed-in-azimuth propeller and a rudder. One morning, a guy went by backing up a sixty-footer at about 5 knots for about a quarter-mile, until he could swing the stern into a junction to turn it around. It took me a while to get my jaw up off the deck.