In 1980 I attended the SETP Annual Symposium at WPAFB. Kelly Johnson was the featured speaker. Aswsome stories about what they accomplished in such short periods of time.
Cockpit pix. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-unique-sr-71-blackbird-cockpit-photos-show-why-no-cockpit-demands-as-much-intense-focus-as-a-habus/amp/ Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I watched this one recently and somewhere in it there's a summary of all the various versions produced, how many crashed and how many pilots were killed. It wasn't a safe plane to fly. They also explain the flame out issues. There's is even video of them preparing one and the pilot for a mission at Beale AFB I think and the video quality is very good. You can see the huge puddle of fuel on the concrete under the plane. I have a friend who worked in this program and he's told all me about the fuel situation and the post flight requirement to get an AC unit connected to the plane so that occupants don't roast to death. I think my dad might have worked on the development of the fuel and it's systems because we found documents after died, classified, in his desk from a consulting gig at SRI while working on the B1 bomber. I beleive Shell Chemical his employer was involved in both projects. He never said anything about any of this while he was alive. I now see that it's already been posted.
It's probably been said already that the flash point of the fuel used was such that you could drop a lighted match in a puddle of it on the ground and it wouldn't ignite.
That's why TEB was used to ignite the fuel. Only a limited amount of "shots" on board. TEB starter is that protruding unit at the idle end of the throttle. It had a rolling counter on it, to indicate how many shots were used during the mission.
Even so .... seeing that fuel paddle on the ground is just such a crazy sight for me to see. I had a couple of Jay Leno type scary events with gasoline but WO ignition thank god.
The first time I got to get close to one was at Edwards AFB on the 40th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier. That must have been 1987. One was parked in the door of an open hangar and you could walk all around it, touch it etc. It was a pretty warm day and there was a big puddle under it. I remember it had great big drip pans under it. I could not smell it so it cannot be very volatile. Biggest impression it left on me was it is much smaller than it looks in pictures. Its long, but its not very high.
I really do not care much for Brian Shul - a well known liar and the only person ever thrown out of the Blackbird program. In fact, if some of the stunts he pulled were found out before he left the service, he would have been court-martialed. Many people in the HabuRats Facebook Group have talked about him regularly - these are people that have direct ties to the Blackbird Program. By the way, the LA Speed Test story by Shul is nothing but fantasy. Sorry, but Brian Shul, including his book, is something that turns my stomach and I react like this every time I see him or his book mentioned.
One of the reasons they retired the SRs was the requirement for a dedicated tanker fleet for the JP-7 fuel. Cost a bunch to keep them operating.
Back in the 80's somebody with pull managed to get an SR to visit the Lynwood Rotary Air Show. After beating the place up with several high speed buzz jobs, it pulled up in front of the main hangar to a mad scramble to get every pot and pan and big trays under the airplane that had steaming fuel pouring out of every seam in the wings. When it left the next day, they did another high speed pass and climbed away to a sound without sight where they were refueled by a tanker. One of the most bizarre demonstrations I have ever seen.
Wow - news to me. I have both his books - made for good reading. I didn't know he had that reputation. MDS
I don't know which side is true, but it does seem that most of negativity against Shul comes from Rich Graham the squadron commander. Sounds like he had a personal beef with Shul and rightly or wrongly has been trying to smear him ever since.
Well at least he does here from some anonymous poster here that we don't know. I don't know about you but I pay very little attention to people who won't even give me their name and his profile page is a blank sheet of paper.
Yup, low vapor pressure (lower volatility) makes fuels harder to start. When the USAF changed from gasoline based JP4 to kerosene based JP8, airstarts of stalled engines became more difficult and usually required a few extra knots to get a start. Really cut down on fire danger after a crash landing, too. Was denser, though, so you got more weight of fuel in the same tanks, 32,500 lbs to 34,200 lbs, as an example.
SR71 Take off Alex on Twitter: "Callsign "Vader" - an SR-71 Blackbird departs an airbase somewhere in East Asia, date unknown. @ilove_aviation -iceman_fox1 (Instagram) https://t.co/g8mW0ohl3U" / Twitter
I've heard it but once live at the ALCS baseball game in the Oakland Coliseum. Jezzuz the echo as it came up from behind the 3rd deck and took off like a bat out of hell. No one in the ballpark any inkling that it was coming. Fantastic.
Do you live in that area? I grew up there. I've seen them flyby a few times. Once at Reno Air Races. Came in low and straight at us from a distance. No one saw it till on top of us. He did a few laps one very low in front of us, stroked the after burner a couple of times. Even in daylight very visible and very long exhaust plume. Then a very low flyby pulled up about 45 deg and lit AB again for sometime on climbout. They look big in pictures or in flight but up close on ground where you can reach out and touch it you realize its not very big.
Yes. I lived in SF Bay Area from the summer of 1970 until 1996 when I began commuting to our new home in NJ. It looked plenty big to us as it suddenly roared over the stadium. Back then before I knew anything about them I figured that it had come over from Alameda Air Station but once one of my car buddies who worked the SR71 and U2 support team talked to me about what he could I concluded that it must have just come west from Beale AFB and it was heading in that direction when it departed.
