What kind of plane would you fly r3v?

[AbeSonic]

20 30 feet max. You could of probably tossed up a baseball and hit the damn thing...lol

[dkbmxer002]

fittbikeco posted that video? lolz. also i would bet more on 40m's over 20-30 feet.

[george graves]

This is most r3v'ers....

[Massive Lee]

Is that a reference to the ability of quickly "pulling out"? ;-)

[b*saint]

That boeing business jet looks like an old 737. The front glass isn't rounded and has the cockpit eyebrow windows.

"They were eliminated from the 737 cockpit design in 2004, although they are still installed in military variants and at customer request. These windows are sometimes removed and plugged, usually during maintenance overhauls and can be distinguished by a metal plug, which differs from smooth metal, which appear in later aircraft that were not originally fitted with the windows."

[george graves]

Aermacchi SF-260

That's a bad-ass little plane. Retractable gear too? Nice.

[b*saint]

[mrsleeve]

Yes, they leaked so much fuel when they were cold after takeoff they would have to run up the speed, heat the airframe up so it would expand and seal up all the leaks, then hit a refueling plane before it ran out of gas, They could then go fly whatever mission they were tasked for. IIRC they grew almost 2 feet in length after they were heated ( from air friction ).

Also only had a flight time of something like 3 hours on full tanks before she was OUT.

[george graves]

I've heard stories that the sr71 could be over the arctic, dip into russia or china, snap a few pic. It would be in and out a matter of 10 mins or something insane...

Speeds and distances like that are hard to grasp.

[mrsleeve]

I've heard stories that the sr71 could be over the arctic, dip into russia or china, snap a few pic. It would be in and out a matter of 10 mins or something insane...

Speeds and distances like that are hard to grasp.

Or coast with the engines on idle form Iran and still over shoot the refueling plane over Sicily

[Pinepig]

Also only had a flight time of something like 3 hours on full tanks before she was OUT.

Yeah but when you can do LosAngeles to Washington DC in an hour and 4 min, 3 hours get's you some decent distance.

[FLYNAVY]

Unfortunately for you Blackbird enthusiasts out there, there isn't much practicality in flying such a jet around US Airspace. Kind of like owning an F40 and only driving it in school zones :)

[mrsleeve]

Unfortunately for you Blackbird enthusiasts out there, there isn't much practicality in flying such a jet around US Airspace. Kind of like owning an F40 and only driving it in school zones :)

yeah there is a long well written story floating around the interwebs, from a former SR-71 driver doing just that.

[george graves]

We trained for a year, flying out of Beale AFB in California , Kadena Airbase in Okinawa, and RAF Mildenhall in England . On a typical training mission, we would take off near Sacramento, refuel over Nevada, accelerate into Montana, obtain high Mach over Colorado, turn right over New Mexico, speed across the Los Angeles Basin, run up the West Coast, turn right at Seattle, then return to Beale. Total flight time: two hours and 40 minutes.

The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 BlackbirdOne day, high above Arizona , we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was 'Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,' ATC responded. The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, ' Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmis sion on that frequency all the way to the coast.

You can read a lot more here:

http://gizmodo.com/5511236/the-thrill-of-flying-the-sr+71-blackbird

[Cloudbase]

Holy Cow this is an awesome thread!

+1 on the P-51's, Spitfire's, F-4U's, SR-71, A-10, F-16, F-14, F-15, etc, etc. Love them all. Would love some seat time in any of them. Almost got an A-10 slot in the MD Air National Guard, but ended up going the civilian route. My brother is in the WV Air National Guard and got me some seat time in a C5 simulator. Did an ILS to mins, a 2 Engine ILS, Air to Air Refueling, and flew it under the Golden Gate! It was surprisingly maneuverable. The only hard part was the judging the flare from 30 feet up.

I fly this for fun:

Mustang II Experimental with an IO-360, FADEC, Multiple Speed Mods, Cruise Prop, Certified to +6 / -4 G's. Based off the P-51 Midget Mustang. It's got a miniature version of the P-51's laminar flow wing and planform.







The Boulder Flatirons from the Air



I fly hang gliders too. It's an obsession = to my BMW obsession. It's the rawest, most pure form of flight in my opinion. You have to use all of your senses to stay up. If you're good you can stay up for hours, fly hundreds of miles, and in the mountains easily reach altitudes in the high teens. Here's a shot of a cliff launch on my old competition glider:





My latest comp glider. A Wills Wing Talon T2C. It's like a Ferrari in the air.





At 14,000 feet over the Rockies



Hero Cam Shot from Last Month