This Is Pictures.

[BlackbirdM3]

This thread eats posts. I had a bunch of pics that I posted last night that seem to have vanished. Lets see if these stick around.

The last flight of the Lockheed SR71 ever. Edwards Afb Oct 9 1999. NASA flew #980 for the very last time and I was lucky enough to witness it. I shot these pics on film and scanned the original pics, that is why they are a bit grainy.





The original plan was for the show the following day to be the last flight of 980, however upon landing a fuel leak was found that couldn't be fixed over night so they did not fly the following day. NASA kept 3 SR71s ready to go for several more years hoping that another program would come along and they could be flown. The funding never did. Following the final ultimate retirement, two warehouses worth of spare parts for the program were literally just thrown out. To this day there has not been a replacement built for the SR71, and US Intelligence/Reconnisence has suffered. As recently as 2004 inquiries were being made to restart the SR71 program. There may have been more recent ones than that even, but I have not been able to find any record of it (Not surprising since the program is still largely classified.)

Will

And this was just a cool shot I got the same day.

[Ryan Stewart]

Normally these are lame as hell but that is a first.

[lambo]

[Desaevious]

ahahahahaha this whole page was full of win. Haven't been this many "new ones" per page in a while.

[slammin.e28]

[jbsjunk]

Danny Trejo is a badass.

[CreamE30]

While I love the SR-72, its seriously awesome, I've always been a bigger fan of the U-2:

I have no idea why. Maybe its because my dad was involved in their development that I'm biased towards them.

[02stu]

While I love the SR-72, its seriously awesome, I've always been a bigger fan of the U-2:

I have no idea why. Maybe its because my dad was involved in their development that I'm biased towards them.

The U-2 is back in business, the global hawk is out! I cna't believe they are still using that 60 year old plane

[mrsleeve]

Captain Slow got a Flight in one of those things a few years back (for a non TG special)

[worangejuice]

hopefully those will hot link. Oh and sorry if your late to work. ;)

EPIC post is EPIC!!!
you sir win internet points!

[george graves]

Thanks.

That dotcom guy is a little....flamboyant? Not sure if that's the right word. I guess money goes to your head.

Is it just me? Or if I was him, I'd get the lap-band, hire a personal chef, a nutritionist, and a personal trainer - nothing too crazy, 30 mins a day would be all you need. With all those resources, you could be much better off, and happier too boot.

That's just straight up gluttony.

[red_e30]

trippy

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[BlackbirdM3]

The U-2 is back in business, the global hawk is out! I cna't believe they are still using that 60 year old plane

Ah yes, the Dragon Lady. Lets put it this way, hanging from my ceiling I have a U2C, a TR1, SR71 and sitting in boxes I have a YF12 and an attempt to build an A12 out of an SR71. Anyone see a trend here?

As for the U2 program, yes it has its downfalls, the biggest being the plane is hard to fly, (it will stall very easily, and when it does, it rips the wings off as it goes down. In a high altitude turn its possible to stall the inside wing and over speed the outside one) its slow, and it has a pretty good sized radar signature. Still, its an amazing airplane. The book "Dragon Lady" by Chris Pocock is excellent. The problem with drones is that they are no faster than the U2, and can be both shot down, and hacked and recovered by the other side (as we have seen in the recent past.) Not exactly a good use of taxpayers money. It makes sense to use the TR1/U2R because at the very least, they can't be hacked and recovered by the other side. Also the program is so old that its payed for. The expense is upkeep, and upgrades. That makes things a lot cheaper than to design and build a new prototype aircraft to do the same task. The SR71 and U2 were best used as a 1-2 punch, the SR rips down someones boarder and initiates all the surface to air radar and the U2 sits just out of missile range and does ELINT (electronic intelligence gathering) where it can loiter for a long time. The trouble is, they still can't fly over a sensitive/denied airspace area without being shot down. There is still only one aircraft that could fill that roll, and currently they are all in museums.:curse: I think the program could be restarted, but there are no pilots to fly them, and no 2 seat trainer that is flyable (both #956 and 981 had the wing spars cut when they were sent off to the museums. I'd guess the single A12 trainer had its wings clipped as well, but perhaps not). That said, the original A12 guys didn't have a sim, and figured out how to fly a totally new airplane the likes of which had never been seen before. Now, if an attempt to restart the SR program were to be made, the nearly new Sim is sitting at Boeing field. (NASA spent about $30M on it to bring it up to standards in '97 I think) The Spares collection would have to come from the aircraft in museums that have had their wings clipped (most of them). I can think of 5 that could be flown again with a lot of effort, 960 (at Castle AFB) was flown in, so its wings are intact, 980 was the last one to fly (Edwards AFB) , 971 (Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinnville Or) was disassembled and trucked there, but it was done in a manor that did not cut the wing spar. 963 was canablized for parts in the '70s but is still sitting at Beale afb with an intact airframe, 972 is sitting in the Smithsonian Air and space museum just as it landed after setting the transcontinental record, LA to D.C. 972 also happens to be "Jetfire" from Transformers. 979 was also flown to its current location at Lackland AFB in Texas. Before anyone brings up the cost to fly an SR71, yes, its high, but so is flying a U2 (it still needs tankers to refuel it, plus forward operating locations, and the people to man all of those.) I found a site that broke down the cost to fly an SR vs a U2 and it was about the same, the SR just flew farther and did the job a lot faster.
Check out www.Habu.org, its a pretty cool website devoted to the SR71 program.

Since this is a pictures thread...











I shot those at the Travis AFB airshow last year.
I shot these on my way home from picking up my M3 in Vancouver Canada.
Boeing Fields M12















These are part of what make the SR71 fast. They are the front and rear bypass doors for the Pratt&Whitney J58 Engines. Air is bled off the front of the compressors and vented out through here. The trick was to get these closed down tight which meant that the spike on the front of the engine was in the correct position to capture the supersonic shockwave and feed it into the engine without causing a flame out. This turned the engines from a standard bypass turbo-jet into a ram-jet engine at high speeds. These also caused the biggest headache (sometimes literally) with flying the SR71; the Unstart. In an Unstart the shockwave is burped out the front of the engine with a very loud and violent BANG often causing the aircraft to yaw to the side that unstarted. The engine wouldn't necessarily flame out, but would if the bypass doors weren't correctly aligned to recapture the shockwave. In the early years this was done manually. Later on it was computer controlled, and the Unstarts became very uncommon. In the early years it was uncommon to have a flight without at least one.







I've met Brian Shul who signed here.







The following day I went to visit 971 in at the Evergreen Air and Space Museum.




Looks like she just flew last week. JP7 fuel stains on the underside.









This is a cool pic, a Ryan Firebee drone, a static mock up of the X15, the D21 drone (launched from the M12 that is at Boeing field) a T38 (used for flight training for both the U2 and SR71 crews) and a Global Hawk (that has just about the same wingspan as the U2R/TR1.)




Micky Thompson built V8s used to start the SR71s engines.


Camera equipment for the SR71


















Global Hawk



A MiG 25, the one and only aircraft that had even the most remote chance of shooting down an SR71. The Russians lost a lot of planes and pilots trying to get into position to try to shoot an SR down. Not one came close to doing so however.



On Christmas Eve I stopped by Castle AFB to see #960, the SR71 with the most flight hours of them all. This was the first SR71 to fly a mission over Vietnam, also making it the first one to fly a mission over enemy soil.

Brian Shul wrote this about 960 in his book "The Untouchables"

" I arrived early in the morning before the museum was open, so while waiting, I took a quiet walk around the grounds. The SR71 looked out of place amongst the mere mortal airplanes on display, yet I was reluctant to go over to it. I had seen the SR in better times and wasn't sure I would enjoy a closer look at this faded shell of a champion.
With the subtle lure of the fine lady she was, I eventually found myself standing in front of the black jet. With faded decals, she seemed less impressive than I had remembered these jets. She was dusty. I had never seen one dusty. The tires sat slightly deflated, unlike the rock hard rubber I had known. Disinterested, a blue jay perched impudently on the left spike. It saddened me to see the plane so lifeless. There was no seepage of fuel across the lines in her belly, dripping to familiar puddles below. The rotating beacons sat dulled, extinguished now from bursts of red light, and no familiar vibrations emanated from the now hollow spaces where J-58s once nestled mightily. I turned and walked into the museum building, wondering what stories the jet could tell if it could speak.
As I was leaving the museum, instead of reluctance, I now felt compelled to once more visit the SR71 outside. I had accepted her new Status and knew it was time to bid farewell to times past. As I stood alone with the Sled at the end of the day, I could easily see past the scars of her weathering and she looked beautiful, as I realized she would always be to those who has been a part of her life in some way. To us, she would never be just a museum piece but a living reminder of all the excellence achieved and sustained for so many years." -Brain Shul, SR71 pilot and author of "Sled Driver" and "The Untouchables"




















Enjoy,
Will

[Vince30]

[Kvasi]