Wanna go fast

[faapgar]

I was just reading an article on fast military jets.There are some bad boys that go from NY city to LA in 30 minutes.Now that is cooking.Kind of makes me think of the Clint Eastwood Movie Foxfire and he steals the Soviet Jet and is escaping at low altitude and creating turbulence below him that is making the snow fly upwards.Could be my bucket list.Ciao Fred

[motogman]

I was wondering how this compared with the record run (at the time of the XR71) so of course I went to google it...

I was amused when I read this... if you look carefully, it says it traversed 3000 miles in just over an hour (which calculates out to 2812 mph) and the article calls it out as 2124 mph. Ha


"The SR-71A displayed at the Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center was flown from Los Angeles to Washington, DC on March 6, 1990. This record-setting flight traversed almost 4,828 kilometers (3,000 miles) in 1 hour, 4 minutes, and 20 seconds, averaging a speed of 3,418 kilometers per hour (2,124 miles per hour).Jul 28, 2016"

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEB_enUS800US800&lei=C6CkX4v1DpO10PEPiYaZ8Ag&q=sr-71%20speed%20record%20coast%20to%20coast&ved=2ahUKEwjLps7Y2-zsAhWTGjQIHQlDBo4QsKwBKAB6BAgoEAE&biw=838&bih=353&dpr=2.25

The new birds are much faster - 2X.

[dwelle]

the SR-71 currently holds that record at 68 minutes 17 seconds.

hard to do anymore as nobody wants to drag a sonic boom across the whole country...

[Quickstep192]

When I saw the SR71 at Udvar Hazy, I was told that the SR71 "cheated" a little bit. They few out west over the ocean and then turned back so they crossed the coast line at speed, slightly shortening the coast-to-coast time. Still pretty darn speedy though.

If you like that sort of thing, Udvar Hazy is a very cool place.

[911 SLANT]

When my wife worked for Lockheed (Skunkworks)in Burbank, she had special clearances to work on the SR-71 Blackbird. She is so proud that she was part of that program. I have been to Lockheed Palmdale to see this plane on inside and outside. Very impressive.

[fanaudical]

I would be interested in a link to that article, please. My understanding is that the SR-71 still holds the speed record for non-rocket-powered aircraft.

[911 SLANT]

My wife says it was clocked at mach 2 , but for classified reasons it can go faster. It can also go as high the atmosphere.

[pavulon]

Originally Posted by Quickstep192

When I saw the SR71 at Udvar Hazy, I was told that the SR71 "cheated" a little bit. They few out west over the ocean and then turned back so they crossed the coast line at speed, slightly shortening the coast-to-coast time. Still pretty darn speedy though.

If you like that sort of thing, Udvar Hazy is a very cool place.

This. A religious experience for wingnuts. SR71, Enola Gay, Spirit of St. Louis...royalty!

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by faapgar

I was just reading an article on fast military jets.There are some bad boys that go from NY city to LA in 30 minutes.

Can you tell us more?

Link, please?

[pwd72s]

Originally Posted by faapgar

I was just reading an article on fast military jets.There are some bad boys that go from NY city to LA in 30 minutes.Now that is cooking.Kind of makes me think of the Clint Eastwood Movie Foxfire and he steals the Soviet Jet and is escaping at low altitude and creating turbulence below him that is making the snow fly upwards.Could be my bucket list.Ciao Fred

I once asked my friend who flew the F-111 for Uncle why he sold his Corvette. His answer was that once you've flied Mach speeds while 200 feet above a desert floor, cars can't thrill much.

Did some reading on the fighter/bomber F-111. Evidently it didn't dogfight & maneuver well. But it didn't have to...it was fast enough to flee from a fight...

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

Did some reading on the fighter/bomber F-111. Evidently it didn't dogfight & maneuver well. But it didn't have to...it was fast enough to flee from a fight...

It wasn't a fighter/bomber and it was never meant to be capable of dogfighting. Closer to being just a supersonic bomber.

And even at Mach 2.5, it couldn't effectively "flee" from (outrun) air to air missiles.

[Embraer]

Within the last 10 years I was a controller at LA Center. I have since moved on to another facility. I worked U2s daily...as they descended BACK into controlled airspace, which was always fun. It was neat talking to the pilot on discrete tac frequency, especially since with his positive pressure suit, he sounded like an astronaut on the radio. When I keyed up, my transmissions would broadcast on several frequencies, tac/uhf/vhf, so every other pilot in my airspace would hear what I was saying to him....but they couldn't hear what he was saying to me. When I'd say "Upon descending back into Class A airspace, would you like to enter the complex at altitude or would you like an enroute descent?" ....about every pilot on frequency would key up and ask what kind of aircraft I was talking to. Of course, mum was the word. It was always great fun. Sometimes it was U2s. Sometimes it wasn't. They would always report their altitude to us as something in coded language ....depending on the week (it was constantly changing...we had a TS panel we had to access beside our scope which gave the key to what which altitude corresponded to what code they told us they were at. These codes were changed all of the time, so we would have to reference that to verify his altitude.

We also had a supersonic corridor that traversed my airspace, as an extension of the Edwards complex. It was routine to see experimental aircraft coming in and out of Groom Lake that were most definitely exceeding (by a large margin) Mach 3 in block altitudes of FL550-590. This was circa 2013-2014. In strange bit of black project humor....they would file their flight plan with bogus AC types listed. IE: XXX as the type. Or sometimes something goofy like an F-4 or F-5. Or a T-38. F-16's would be supersonically flying chase, and the "F5" would walk away at well more than twice the speed they were at.

If you've spent any time in Palmdale, you'd be used to hearing sonic booms in the morning. Still happens over the Mojave desert.

[otto_kretschmer]

Originally Posted by Quickstep192

When I saw the SR71 at Udvar Hazy, I was told that the SR71 "cheated" a little bit. They few out west over the ocean and then turned back so they crossed the coast line at speed, slightly shortening the coast-to-coast time. Still pretty darn speedy though.

If you like that sort of thing, Udvar Hazy is a very cool place.

the Blackbird takes off light with a low fuel load and catches a tanker to top off before continuing the mission

[KNS]

Originally Posted by Embraer

We also had a supersonic corridor that traversed my airspace, as an extension of the Edwards complex. It was routine to see experimental aircraft coming in and out of Groom Lake that were most definitely exceeding (by a large margin) Mach 3 in block altitudes of FL550-590. This was circa 2013-2014. In strange bit of black project humor....they would file their flight plan with bogus AC types listed. IE: XXX as the type. Or sometimes something goofy like an F-4 or F-5. Or a T-38. F-16's would be supersonically flying chase, and the "F5" would walk away at well more than twice the speed they were at.

So these aircraft coming in and out of Groom Lake at well over Mach 3 - these were manned or unmanned? Were you talking to the pilot in the actual Mach 3++ aircraft? Or, were you talking to a a pilot in a remote station?

[Embraer]

The only supersonic drones that I worked were F-4 Phantoms that were being converted to become aerial targets. They'd get them out of the boneyard in Arizona, and fly them to Mojave to be converted to QF-4's. They were manned during these operations, and it was always flown by the crustiest sounding pilot you can imagine. Callsigns were normally CHEVY11 or OLDIE11.

[Embraer]

Before the Rosebowl in 2012, a B2 did the flyover. There were actually two B2's that day over SoCal. DOOM11 and DOOM12. I worked them in holding before I gave the descent on one of them to SoCal Tracon. One stayed at altitude and loitered.

I worked White Knight once, the Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne carrier. That was pretty cool.

We worked SOFIA all of the time, callsign "NASA747"....which is the NASA 747 telescope aircraft. I knew one of the pilots and he offered to let me ride along. I didn't want to hang out on a 747 for 10+ hours. In hindsight, it would have been a cool "this one time...." experience to tell people about.

The Blue Angels train in El Centro during the winter...we'd work them all the time. Of course, we'd work the Thunderbirds all of the time too.

Also...lots of fast things would come from the Pacific Ocean and make their way towards China Lake.

....and well before my time....potentially one of the most catastrophic aviation accidents occurred when an F16 nose dived from FL280 and crashed JUST outside LA Center. If the center would have been hit, besides the controller deaths, there would have been cascading repercussions.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-23-me-542-story.html

sorry for the hijack...love talking about my time at ZLA.

[famoroso]

Love these stories. Thanks for sharing.

I just did a SD > SF > SLC > SF > Palmdale (pit stop) > SD road trip. Had to stop in Palmdale to see these beauties...

[Embraer]

The Oxcart in the photo above is the first one made. An interesting note...there used to be an F117 parked next to them. That's literally outside LA Center. It's across the street to the east.

The F117 "museum piece" was taken away at night time. It was there when I left work, and gone when I came back in the morning. The F117's were being stored in hangars on the field. In about 2013, they were put back into testing service at the Tonopah Test Site.

[GH85Carrera]

Every aviation nut really hopes the US military has something so advance the SR-71 is slow by comparison. One of our customers was a SR-71 pilot and had to get special permission from the Air Force for his son to take a photo of him taking off on his last mission.

He said it they were cooking along fast he could not touch the dash area close to the skin of the SR-71 as it was so hot it would burn him through the gloves. The overall length of the SR-71 would grow several inches when hot.

I just find it hard to believe anything can move through the air so fast that in can go cross country in 30 minutes. The laws of physics are laws that can't be broken.

I honestly hope we have aircraft of that performance. Maybe they have tiles like the space shuttle did to withstand the heat of moving through the air. I really hope we have those aircraft.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

It wasn't a fighter/bomber and it was never meant to be capable of dogfighting. Closer to being just a supersonic bomber.

And even at Mach 2.5, it couldn't effectively "flee" from (outrun) air to air missiles.

Originally Bobby McNamara wanted the Air Force and Navy to share an airframe and they would be interceptors/bombers. After some fighting the Navy said no way it was happening and Grumman (the contractor for the Navy version of the F111) submitted the F14 to replace it. The Air Force used it as a tactical bomber, electronic warfare and SEAD. At low level and high speed n(600kts) it didn't worry much about surface to air missiles and back in the day look down/shoot down Soviet air to air missiles were not yet developed properly.