Very interesting article. Did anyone else notice the website? If you try to select the text, either double-tap or right clicking brings up a indicator "web site protected"
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The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
81–90 of 141 posts
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#82You 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.
There are lots of them around. I have seen SR-71's and A-12's in at least 6 different museums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Accid...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12#Fate_of_the_A-12...
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#83I often think about life using aviation analogies. You need to have enough airspeed, for instance, to maintain lift: one must keep moving to survive. Don't stall your wing with too much angle of attack = don't bite off more than you can chew. Etc etc...
>one must keep moving to survive Sharks?
No. Reef sharks have been observed resting on the sea floor, pumping water over their gills periodically by opening and closing their mouths.
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#84I 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?
Just one of the more minor ways the military-industrial complex is able to waste stupefying amounts of money.
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#85Stick 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…
Wouldn’t a well trained pilot (like somebody learning on the SR71) be very familiar with what a slow airplane feels like? I’m shocked that a skilled pilot would have allowed that plane to get so dangerously slow.
Yeah it sounds like a tall tale. "Falling at a slight bank" sounds like ideal conditions for onset of a spin. Which a pilot would be very wary of when close to the ground because it means certain death.
Also, would it be possible to fly level at such a speed in an SR71? And isn't there a HUD and vertical speed warner?
On the other hand their expectation of being grounded sounds pretty accurate :)
Oh well I never flew anything better than a Cessna 172 so don't take my word for it.
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#86To anyone who is interested in this stuff I would strongly recommend the book “Skunk Works” by Ben Rich. Full of interesting history about stealth planes, and a masterclass on how to run a ragtag company.
Could Lockheed ever be described as "ragtag"? Even with some independence it would still be a department of a huge company.
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dude on Reddit says: > They could hear ATC but not other aircraft, because civilian aircraft are on VHF frequencies, military on UHF, and anybody above 60,000 feet (like the SR-71's) were on a separate, center-wide UHF frequency so they wouldn't have to switch frequencies constantly. So the SR-71 and F-18 pilots couldn't have heard those other aircraft requesting groundspeed, or heard each other for that matter.…
Yea there doesn't seem to be one generally believed consensus. The ATC guys may simply be wrong about not having access to VHF. It could be that it depends on the mission as to whether or not they would be using them. But they could also be right that an SR wouldn't be asking for speed checks or that ATC can't see their real speed in some way. I don't know.
He makes some other good points too though about not being able to see speeds that high and them being classified.
It is a cool story though, kinda hope it's true but it does sound a bit too epic to be true.
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#88Earlier 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…
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!
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#89Very interesting article. Did anyone else notice the website? If you try to select the text, either double-tap or right clicking brings up a indicator "web site protected"
I noticed this too since it disabled my ability middle click scroll and highlight lines while I read. It appears to be a very ham-handed approach to DRM that many websites are using these days. But, putting it into a text browser lets me copy/paste the whole article. So it's only punishing the legitimate reader using a regular browser with JS enabled, not the potential thief!
"These days"? Hooking oncontextmenu and similar events to prevent copy/paste was a common technique in the 1990s and early 2000s. It's largely passed out of usage nowadays, as everyone's realized how ineffective it is.
Re: The slowest SR-71 Blackbird fly-by
#90Stick 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…
Wouldn’t a well trained pilot (like somebody learning on the SR71) be very familiar with what a slow airplane feels like? I’m shocked that a skilled pilot would have allowed that plane to get so dangerously slow.
We are all human and this was probably an unusual exercise. Given their distraction of trying to find a field in this aircraft, I can easily imagine how quickly the plane got away from them. 152 kts is roughly 174 mph... imagine trying to find an address when going any slower than 200 mph is potentially fatal.