This Is Pictures.

[slammin.e28]

SR-71 Blackbird.

God's airplane.

[InuFaye]

SR-71 Blackbird.

God's airplane.

Don't be silly, everyone knows that God's E30 can fly.

[cale]

I have not one, not two but three SR71s, (actually one SR71, one A12 and one YF12. The A12 and YF12 are under construction. Converting a SR71 kit to an A12 is not as simple as it looks.) I also have a U2C, a TR1, and a U2R (under construction.) Yeah, I have a thing for Lockheed spy planes.

You forgot the word model in there somewhere...at least I hope you forgot

[Kvasi]

Have to say, a SR71 taking off over my head is by far the coolest ive seen.

[BlackbirdM3]

You forgot the word model in there somewhere...at least I hope you forgot

Hahaha, I'd need a big apartment to keep the real deal of all those. ;) Perhaps after I win the biggest lottery in history (twice) I'll be able to go out and buy the real deal.

As far as one coming out of retirement, its not happening. The show is over, the fat lady has sung. NASA 844/17980 was the last one to fly. That was Oct 9 1999. I shot these pics that day. (Sorry the pics are grainy, I shot them on film, and pictures were made on non-glossy paper, so the grain is actually the paper grains from when I scanned them. Oddly enough the lens I was using that day is older than the whole SR71/A12 program.)





In 2007 the USAF literally threw out 2 full warehouses worth of spares for these. (One of the original excuses for retiring the plane back in 1990, there weren't enough spares to keep them flying. Total B.S. Many people said they had enough spares to keep the fleet flying for the next 30 years at that point.)

For a long time following the last flight of 980, NASA kept the bird in flight ready storage and would pull her out of the hanger and to engine run ups to make sure everything was in working order in case they had a chance to fly it again. There were no outside contractors who were looking to do high speed research and so in 2003 or so, the three NASA birds were sent off to museums. The SR71B two seat trainer had its wings cut off and was shipped to a museum in Michigan (with the wing spar cut, the plane can never fly again) 971 (the plane NASA never flew, but was one of the 3 that were brought back for the USAF in '95. It was the first one to fly of the 3.) was carefully taken apart and sent to the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinville Oregon (It could be flown again since they didn't cut the wing spar when it was taken apart for transport) and 980 sits outside at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Afb. There are no more active duty pilots or ground crews left, no flyable trainer to train new pilots (however the flight simulator is up at Boeing field ready to go) The fuel is no longer produced, the tires are no longer produced and like I said, they threw all the good spares in dumpsters and hauled them off to the scrap heap.


That said, from the research I've done, the program could still be restarted, it would be holy crap expensive, and a new SR71B would have to be created (actually easier than it sounds, still not easy however.) There are a handful of SRs that were flown to their current homes, so flight-worthy airframes do exist. Most of the engines are scattered around the country at museums, and required spares could be pulled from nonflyable aircraft, and or remanufactured using reverse engineering of the original parts. Some of the required preflight equipment such as the hydrollic fluid heaters might be hard to find. Again, when the program was restarted in '95, NASA didn't have any working heaters and the USAF ground crews (mostly made up of former program people who knew what they were doing) had to find them and rebuild them to end up with a working tool. (I think they found five broken ones, and managed to build 3 fully working ones.)

I'd kill to see another SR71 fly, but it will never happen.

Oh yeah, the YF12 model kit is holy crap expensive. Apparently in 1/48 scale, its super rare and has been out of production for years. I see a couple come up on ebay every so often and they usually go for about $120 (wtf?) I was bat shit crazy to spend $65 on the one I have. (I still can't believe I spent that much on a model.)

Will

[Thizzelle]

awesome honda is awesome.

Saw that car last night, he wasn't a good driver. But everyone was jizzing their pants because of a rear wheel drive civic lol

[cawb352]

Just another day at work. 3 generations of SL. If only we had a W107 here today.

[CorvallisBMW]

How about a Civette?

[Massimo]

Hahaha, I'd need a big apartment to keep the real deal of all those. ;) Perhaps after I win the biggest lottery in history (twice) I'll be able to go out and buy the real deal.

As far as one coming out of retirement, its not happening. The show is over, the fat lady has sung. NASA 844/17980 was the last one to fly. That was Oct 9 1999. I shot these pics that day. (Sorry the pics are grainy, I shot them on film, and pictures were made on non-glossy paper, so the grain is actually the paper grains from when I scanned them. Oddly enough the lens I was using that day is older than the whole SR71/A12 program.)





In 2007 the USAF literally threw out 2 full warehouses worth of spares for these. (One of the original excuses for retiring the plane back in 1990, there weren't enough spares to keep them flying. Total B.S. Many people said they had enough spares to keep the fleet flying for the next 30 years at that point.)

For a long time following the last flight of 980, NASA kept the bird in flight ready storage and would pull her out of the hanger and to engine run ups to make sure everything was in working order in case they had a chance to fly it again. There were no outside contractors who were looking to do high speed research and so in 2003 or so, the three NASA birds were sent off to museums. The SR71B two seat trainer had its wings cut off and was shipped to a museum in Michigan (with the wing spar cut, the plane can never fly again) 971 (the plane NASA never flew, but was one of the 3 that were brought back for the USAF in '95. It was the first one to fly of the 3.) was carefully taken apart and sent to the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinville Oregon (It could be flown again since they didn't cut the wing spar when it was taken apart for transport) and 980 sits outside at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Afb. There are no more active duty pilots or ground crews left, no flyable trainer to train new pilots (however the flight simulator is up at Boeing field ready to go) The fuel is no longer produced, the tires are no longer produced and like I said, they threw all the good spares in dumpsters and hauled them off to the scrap heap.


That said, from the research I've done, the program could still be restarted, it would be holy crap expensive, and a new SR71B would have to be created (actually easier than it sounds, still not easy however.) There are a handful of SRs that were flown to their current homes, so flight-worthy airframes do exist. Most of the engines are scattered around the country at museums, and required spares could be pulled from nonflyable aircraft, and or remanufactured using reverse engineering of the original parts. Some of the required preflight equipment such as the hydrollic fluid heaters might be hard to find. Again, when the program was restarted in '95, NASA didn't have any working heaters and the USAF ground crews (mostly made up of former program people who knew what they were doing) had to find them and rebuild them to end up with a working tool. (I think they found five broken ones, and managed to build 3 fully working ones.)

I'd kill to see another SR71 fly, but it will never happen.

Oh yeah, the YF12 model kit is holy crap expensive. Apparently in 1/48 scale, its super rare and has been out of production for years. I see a couple come up on ebay every so often and they usually go for about $120 (wtf?) I was bat shit crazy to spend $65 on the one I have. (I still can't believe I spent that much on a model.)

Will

Wow that is interesting. Never seen one and probably never will but would be awesome to. Along with a F117, B2, and a B52 superfortress, oh and don't forget the antov 225.

I think with the development of UAVs it is unlikely to see planes of this calibre ever again.

[lambo]

[BlackbirdM3]

Wow that is interesting. Never seen one and probably never will but would be awesome to. Along with a F117, B2, and a B52 superfortress, oh and don't forget the antov 225.

I think with the development of UAVs it is unlikely to see planes of this calibre ever again.

I've got a good story about the Antonov 124. We were flying into an airport just east of Vancouver British Colombia at the city of Abbotsford in late July or early August in 1986. At the time the Worlds Exposition was happening in Vancouver. At the time, Abbosford was known for hosting the second largest airshow in North America, however for Expo '86 most of the countries who had pavilions at Expo also sent their national aerobatic teams over for the airshow. Due to the fact that relations with Russia had become much better, they send over the 124 full of their newest cool stuff to display at the airshow.

We were flying into Abbosford in the afternoon the day before the show started. We were in a Cessna 175 (4 seat single engine) and were slotted in to land between a C5A Galaxy and the AN-124. Needless to say we were sandwiched between extra-heavy and holy crap heavy for landing (can you say wake turbulence of epic proportions?) The C5 landed, and the An124 was crowding the pattern so air traffic control was trying to hurry us along. We touched down and were instructed to exit the active runway immediately and to taxi across the field to visitor parking. We got clear of the active and headed out across the freshly mowed field. Everything was good until the nose wheel found a well hidden and unmarked hole where they had pulled a telephone post out, causing a prop strike that curled our prop quite nicely. My dad got everything shut down before more damage could be done. We got out and surveyed the damage. Needless to say, my dad was just a little pissed off (He was 225 lbs, 6 foot 2 and a former Marine with a very short fuse. Not the type of person to screw with.) He got on the radio and explained the situation with ground control using more four letter expletives than you can shake a stick at. He pulled the plane out of the hole by hanging on the tail and once the nose came up just pivoted it on the main gear till the nose wheel was on solid ground. After asking where they wanted us to go from there, we were instructed to taxi over to the flight line for the warbirds. We proceeded to head to the destination and parked between a Hawker Seafury and a beautiful P51. From there another partner in our airplane met us to give us a ride, only to learn that the prop was screwed and both he and my dad went hunting for the idiot ground control person who told us to taxi across the field in the first place. The guy vanished. We did get to stay parked where we were for the entire show while a propeller place on site fixed the prop. The best part was that SONY produced a video of the show and at one point pans across the show and at the far end you can see our yellow and brown Cessna 175 sitting there with no prop. Let me tell you, it stuck out like a sore thumb. My aunt gave my dad the video for christmas and I found our plane in there while watching it for the first time. In the end, we were a couple days late heading home but the prop was fixed and the motor was not damaged.

In '88 I saw the AN-224 at the same show. Let me tell you, those things are HUGE.

Seeing a B52, F117 or B2 here in the US isn't all that hard. There are lots of B52s in museums here, and B2s and 117s can be seen at airshows. Heck, at the Edwards Afb airshow that turned out to be the last flight of the SR71, there was a flyby of a B52, B1, and B2, as well as the first public display of the F22 (I have pictures that at the time might have been illegal and a possible breach of national security.) I'll have to see if I can find those and get them scanned. B52s are seen less frequently at airshows these days as there aren't many left flying. Still, after 50 years of service, they are still being used, as are the U2s.

A side note on the B1B. In 1990 the Air Force announced that they had reduced the radar signature to near stealth levels. Ben Rich, then the head of the Lockheed Skunkworks simply laughed and stated the SR71 had better stealth than the B1 from day one. If I remember correctly this happened after SR71 972 had just set numerous world records on its last flight to Washington DC where it was placed into the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I think the statement was made by a top Air Force official who did not support the SR71 program in an effort to downplay the fact that 972 had just shattered the record from Los Angles to Washington DC. (It took pilot Ed Yeilding and his RSO JT Vida (who had the most hours in a Blackbird of anyone in the program) 64 minutes, making the average speed 2124 mph.)

UAVs lack the speed and the ability to fly high enough to not get shot down. The other issue is that they tend to get hacked and either crashed or essentially stolen. The current iteration of the U2 called the TR1A is still being used for this very reason. In fact, the Global Hawk program (originally called Tier 2+ and Tier 3-) just got canceled shifting all the missions back to the TR1 and U2Rs. The Global Hawk program was one of the factors that led to the SR71 program being shut down. Obviously we still haven't figured out how to do better than the SR71 and have gone back to the aircraft that the SR71 was supposed to replace (One step forward, 5 steps back?) No need for the SR71? You must be joking. There was still talk of reviving the SR71 program in 2007 (that is the most recent reference I've found so far) That tells me there is still a huge hole in the reconnaissance abilities that hasn't been filled since the SR71 was retired. Also, the SR71 and U2s worked best as a team. The U2 can't fly as high and is an easy target for a surface to air missile, so they can't overfly a hostile area. They can fly around the outside of the area and look in, but overflights are out of the question as Francis Gary Powers discovered back on May 1, 1960. The best way to use the U2 is for electronic surveillance, the best trick was to send an SR71 through the hostile area to get all the enemy radar stations to kick on and launch their SAMs at it. The U2 would record all the radio frequencies allowing better electronic counter measures to be produced for the U2, SR71 and everything else from a B52 to an F16. It also allowed for the ability to find new technology and record its signature (rendering it less effective when used.) The SR71 and U2s provided a 1-2 punch that hasn't been replicated since. When the SRs were flown out of Kadina Airbase on Okinawa, the U2s would be stationed all along or around Viet Nam, North Korea, and China. The SR would over fly all three doing its thing, and when the radar stations would kick on and the SAMs would be launched at it, the U2s would gather all the radar signatures and other electronic intelligence they could for the area they were in. The tactic worked very very well right up till the last SR71 came back from Kadena. The same thing was used in Europe. It would seem that there is still a need for something as bad ass as the SR71, and even now, the SR71 is still needed to fill the same roll it was designed for.

Will

[BlackbirdM3]

Hahahah, yeah no kidding. When I've got the Datsun out, and its got a tank full of 110 leaded and its tuned for racing, a lift of the throttle will usually induce a beach ball sized fireball out the exhaust. The 99.5 dB exhaust also gets the point across. I absolutely hate Priuses. One thing to note, if you do this near a prius, beware they are likely to do something stupid and take you or someone else out. Seriously, keep your eyes open for Prius drivers doing stupid stuff (swerving across 5 lanes of freeway with no signal to make the off ramp they are about to miss because they were lost in the carpool lane. Or for that matter, they get on the freeway, floor it and do the same thing to get to the carpool lane where they immediately slow to less than the speed limit.)

Will

[Massimo]

I've got a good story about the Antonov 124. We were flying into an airport just east of Vancouver British Colombia at the city of Abbotsford in late July or early August in 1986. At the time the Worlds Exposition was happening in Vancouver. At the time, Abbosford was known for hosting the second largest airshow in North America, however for Expo '86 most of the countries who had pavilions at Expo also sent their national aerobatic teams over for the airshow. Due to the fact that relations with Russia had become much better, they send over the 124 full of their newest cool stuff to display at the airshow.

We were flying into Abbosford in the afternoon the day before the show started. We were in a Cessna 175 (4 seat single engine) and were slotted in to land between a C5A Galaxy and the AN-124. Needless to say we were sandwiched between extra-heavy and holy crap heavy for landing (can you say wake turbulence of epic proportions?) The C5 landed, and the An124 was crowding the pattern so air traffic control was trying to hurry us along. We touched down and were instructed to exit the active runway immediately and to taxi across the field to visitor parking. We got clear of the active and headed out across the freshly mowed field. Everything was good until the nose wheel found a well hidden and unmarked hole where they had pulled a telephone post out, causing a prop strike that curled our prop quite nicely. My dad got everything shut down before more damage could be done. We got out and surveyed the damage. Needless to say, my dad was just a little pissed off (He was 225 lbs, 6 foot 2 and a former Marine with a very short fuse. Not the type of person to screw with.) He got on the radio and explained the situation with ground control using more four letter expletives than you can shake a stick at. He pulled the plane out of the hole by hanging on the tail and once the nose came up just pivoted it on the main gear till the nose wheel was on solid ground. After asking where they wanted us to go from there, we were instructed to taxi over to the flight line for the warbirds. We proceeded to head to the destination and parked between a Hawker Seafury and a beautiful P51. From there another partner in our airplane met us to give us a ride, only to learn that the prop was screwed and both he and my dad went hunting for the idiot ground control person who told us to taxi across the field in the first place. The guy vanished. We did get to stay parked where we were for the entire show while a propeller place on site fixed the prop. The best part was that SONY produced a video of the show and at one point pans across the show and at the far end you can see our yellow and brown Cessna 175 sitting there with no prop. Let me tell you, it stuck out like a sore thumb. My aunt gave my dad the video for christmas and I found our plane in there while watching it for the first time. In the end, we were a couple days late heading home but the prop was fixed and the motor was not damaged.

In '88 I saw the AN-224 at the same show. Let me tell you, those things are HUGE.

Seeing a B52, F117 or B2 here in the US isn't all that hard. There are lots of B52s in museums here, and B2s and 117s can be seen at airshows. Heck, at the Edwards Afb airshow that turned out to be the last flight of the SR71, there was a flyby of a B52, B1, and B2, as well as the first public display of the F22 (I have pictures that at the time might have been illegal and a possible breach of national security.) I'll have to see if I can find those and get them scanned. B52s are seen less frequently at airshows these days as there aren't many left flying. Still, after 50 years of service, they are still being used, as are the U2s.

A side note on the B1B. In 1990 the Air Force announced that they had reduced the radar signature to near stealth levels. Ben Rich, then the head of the Lockheed Skunkworks simply laughed and stated the SR71 had better stealth than the B1 from day one. If I remember correctly this happened after SR71 972 had just set numerous world records on its last flight to Washington DC where it was placed into the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I think the statement was made by a top Air Force official who did not support the SR71 program in an effort to downplay the fact that 972 had just shattered the record from Los Angles to Washington DC. (It took pilot Ed Yeilding and his RSO JT Vida (who had the most hours in a Blackbird of anyone in the program) 64 minutes, making the average speed 2124 mph.)

UAVs lack the speed and the ability to fly high enough to not get shot down. The other issue is that they tend to get hacked and either crashed or essentially stolen. The current iteration of the U2 called the TR1A is still being used for this very reason. In fact, the Global Hawk program (originally called Tier 2+ and Tier 3-) just got canceled shifting all the missions back to the TR1 and U2Rs. The Global Hawk program was one of the factors that led to the SR71 program being shut down. Obviously we still haven't figured out how to do better than the SR71 and have gone back to the aircraft that the SR71 was supposed to replace (One step forward, 5 steps back?) No need for the SR71? You must be joking. There was still talk of reviving the SR71 program in 2007 (that is the most recent reference I've found so far) That tells me there is still a huge hole in the reconnaissance abilities that hasn't been filled since the SR71 was retired. Also, the SR71 and U2s worked best as a team. The U2 can't fly as high and is an easy target for a surface to air missile, so they can't overfly a hostile area. They can fly around the outside of the area and look in, but overflights are out of the question as Francis Gary Powers discovered back on May 1, 1960. The best way to use the U2 is for electronic surveillance, the best trick was to send an SR71 through the hostile area to get all the enemy radar stations to kick on and launch their SAMs at it. The U2 would record all the radio frequencies allowing better electronic counter measures to be produced for the U2, SR71 and everything else from a B52 to an F16. It also allowed for the ability to find new technology and record its signature (rendering it less effective when used.) The SR71 and U2s provided a 1-2 punch that hasn't been replicated since. When the SRs were flown out of Kadina Airbase on Okinawa, the U2s would be stationed all along or around Viet Nam, North Korea, and China. The SR would over fly all three doing its thing, and when the radar stations would kick on and the SAMs would be launched at it, the U2s would gather all the radar signatures and other electronic intelligence they could for the area they were in. The tactic worked very very well right up till the last SR71 came back from Kadena. The same thing was used in Europe. It would seem that there is still a need for something as bad ass as the SR71, and even now, the SR71 is still needed to fill the same roll it was designed for.

Will

lol the little 175 betweena c5 and 124. There is a video of the 124 at cambbera airport taking off. Some say the lifted off after they ran out of runway and some say that they just got off the ground when the runway ended. Ithor way they were dam close.

Would be sweet to see them fly again. And would be even better if they cam to AUS were I could see them.

[tg318is]

I am so intrigued by the SR71/ A12 and the stories involved with them. If this book was cheaper, I would be all over it.

http://galleryonepublishing.com/BlackbirdStores/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=51

[Jand3rson]

why the hell would someone put a ka motor in a civic. worst engine. ever.

Because it's been converted to RWD! I wouldn't give a shit if it was an M10, they still improved the car by 10 fold!