BEST AIRPLANE EVER SR-71 BLACKBIRD

We had to have them hi-res photos from Slobovegrad, you know!
Yes, they were fabulously expensive to operate.
That's why they are in the museum right now.
Satellites take the pictures we need.

go up and down the entire century series of planes..it has a great history

I built one as a model in 1965 as a kid.

We had a unit that serviced the German's 104s on our ramp.
One careless fellow walked into the leading edge of the wing, bumped his head and got a nasty looking cut.
That's how sharp that airfoil was.
They were something else.

one fact..fuel for the SR71..throw a cigarette into JP7 fuel of SR71..and it not catch fire and explode

Me, too.
A Revell kit. Before they admitted its existence, Revell had sold model kits of it! It was pretty big, too. Hung from a string in my room.

leaks like a sieve...

I'd prefer an x-15

I would not be surprised..in the future..we design an almost wingless plane like the F104 and try it again

YEP that was it!

I built a B52 Model..painted it to look real...hung it from ceiling..my female cat come in the room and jumped up and downed it...it landed on the ground with a broken wing..I did not beat my cat for it..I let her go..blameless

Years later I built their Area 51 Sport Model.
A ufo Bob Lazar described for them.
Revell was a great model company.

An X15 was basically a sky rocket that couldn't even take off from the ground, was air launched by a bomber, landed after a brief flight and hit the ground like a sack of taters on its metal skids.
I wouldn't even fly one of those, now that's a death trap!

they learned about the edge of space and hypersonic flight with them, so they were great. I think X15s could have been launched from the cargo bay of the space shuttle and roared around in orbit shooting up enemy satellites.
Woulda been fun.

they already announced the SR-72 tard....its wayyyyyyyy faster than the SR-71

i am not a tard..but any improvement over SR71 i find fascinating

perhaps you can explain TR3 to the rest of us

If it is the weird, large craft I had fly right over my house one rainy evening, I could splain a little of it.
It made a weird sound, a thrumming noise not like a jet engine at all. WUMMmmmm...WUMmmmmmm...WUMmmmmm.
Really.
It had a single large round yellow light on the underside, maybe 20 feet wide. It was segmented in hexagons like the eye of a housefly. No other lights were seen. The shape was not certain due to low hanging clouds and rain.
Crazy thing flew right over, I tried to get the girlfriend to come out when I heard that weird sound coming, but I was the only one around when it flew over.

this was less than 2 miles from a big Air Force base.
Believe it
Or not.
I had read some years ago about the application of acoustics for refrigeration. Then I read about acoustic waves (sound)propagating in a resonant chamber somehow providing power. Then this thing flies by thrumming on a dark and rainy night. I've also read about superconductor rings influencing gravity and weight. Add it up and there's your TR3b.
That's all I can tell you.

most dangerous noise I ever hear was at paper mill..boiler was doing an emergency shut down..the sound was so powerful it was unbelievable

it was like a powefull bass player who lost control

when boiler is shutting down under duress..I think the boiler flatten 20 miles or better if it is not brung under control..I have never heard the sound of power..jet aircraft do not have that kind of power

industrial boiler turn everything to toothpics

Like the B2 better for its alien presence - it's a gigantic plane, but it's impossible to tell as the curved surfaces and matte black paint make it difficult to really see the dimensions. Radar crossection of a bug is very impressive on such a behemoth- each one cost 1.8 billion 1980's dollars to build. Uhmazin!

I used to be a SR-71 fanboy (it was a great plane no doubt), but it hindsight the MiG-25 and MiG-31 have distinct advantages.

An SR-71 (like most U.S. equipment) is far too overcomplicated, expensive, and unreliable for real wartime use.

Fun facts:

1) At maximum speed an SR-71 is only 150-375mph faster than a MiG-25 or MiG-31. This is easily overcome by the speed of AA missiles. Horizontal service ceilings are pretty comparable with edge going to SR-71. MiG still holds ultimate altitude record.

2) MiGs were cranked out like cordwood and were easy and cheap to repair and operated in all service conditions. Over 1700 were built. 300+ are still in service.

3) Once the MiG came out, SR-71's ability to do an real spywork near the USSR was finished. The SR-71, like most US operations, are done against 2nd and 3rd world countries.

4) Only 32 SR-71 were built, 1/3 of them crashed and burnt in the first 5 years of service. Running the remaining fleet was financially comparable to running a small space program. Running the MiGs was like running any other plane.

5) The SR-71 is not armable unlike the MiGs. It is relegated to reconnaissance only. The MiGs do interception, AWACS role, and reconnaissance as well.

6) The SR-71 is a true trailer queen that frankly needed to babied, run for a mission, and then extensively rebuilt/serviced. MiGs can be scrambled at any time from the desert heat to the arctic and sit outside with no problems with little maintenance.

So as a bragging right, the SR-71 was an achievement and it certainly looks cool, but it had its own set of disadvantages that everybody overlooks.

All the JP series of fuels are just glorified kerosene. It WILL ignite with a match but temperature and vaporization conditions have to be right. And when they are, even static electricity will ignite it.

the sr 71 also has lousy short or rough field performance . migs can use grass , gravel snow etc .

Back in the late 90's a co-worker's son was serving in the Air Force. He reported overhearing a radio transmission from an SR-71 advising that they were over Japan and beginning their descent into a West Coast air base.

Me and the SR-71 in my backyard.

[link to i.imgur.com (secure)]

X-15