
SR-71 Blackbird Communication to Tower - da5e
http://www.econrates.com/reality/schul.html
======
cstross
Same pilot, different anecdote, "how slow can it go?"

[http://tailspinstales.blogspot.com/2010/01/slowest-
blackbird...](http://tailspinstales.blogspot.com/2010/01/slowest-
blackbird.html)

~~~
icegreentea
The Blackbird is full of amazing stories. Skunkworks - Ben Rich's memoirs [1]
is full of ridiculous stories, both of making the SR-71 as well as stories
from pilots (as well as a lot of other projects).

Not every thing in there can be taken at face value (his rant against the
paint locker on the Sea Shadow for example... it's really the 'toxic solvents
and chemicals locker'), but still full of gold.

For example, they had into all sorts of problems wielding titanium for the
first time. Chlorine would wreck all sorts of havoc on the plates they used,
which they discovered when someone drew on a plate with a ball-point pen. And
then they completely ripped their hair out when the municipality increased the
chlorination in the water they were using to clean the plates.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/dp/0316743003)

~~~
runjake
I second the recommendation for Ben Rich's book. It's a great history lesson
and explanations behind the thinking of some of the greatest aerospace hackers
& out-of-box thinkers.

I thought the passage about "600 mph birds" was particularly humorous because
that was the first thing my young hacker mind thought of during a training
section on the radar cross-section of the aircraft I was working on. It went
something like this:

Instructor: "So the radar cross section is reduced considerably to
approximately the size of a small bird"

Me: "So why don't they just look for a small bird going 600 mph?"

Instructor: "..."

Some years after, an F-117 was shot down during the Kosovo War, reportedly
using this method (I had nothing to do with it :). I think this was probably a
big learning lesson in regard to stealth technology.

And no disrespect to my instructor, he was a professional and a god of his
domain.

~~~
Nemo999
>Some years after, an F-117 was shot down during the Kosovo War, reportedly
using this method (I had nothing to do with it :). I think this was probably a
big learning lesson in regard to stealth technology.

It was a bit more complicated than that ;-)

The full account how they managed to shot down a "stealth" F-117A with some
modifications to cold war era Russian missiles, microwave ovens as radar
decoys and in-promptu installed landlines can be read here:
<http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=6376>

~~~
runjake
Of course it was a bit more complicated than that, that's why I recommend the
book :)

I can believe the rabbit story in that link. ECM radiation is nasty.

------
mdaniel
Thank you again, <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/> , for making
my web browsing experience safe from the onslaught of backgrounds and fonts.

~~~
shizcakes
This is AMAZING. I didn't mind the maroon on beige as much as some, but I hate
the crammed feel of a blogspot page, and it does an amazing job of freeing
that content.

------
rbanffy
I know this has been posted many times before, but I love it every time.

------
rudyfink
In reference to the uniform voice of center controllers--the "Houston Center"
voice, Tom Wolfe tells a related story about pilots in "The Right Stuff." He
asserts that all of the test pilots of the era copied the slow, calm, and
always subtly positive delivery of Chuck Yeager as the pre-eminent pilot of
the day. Other pilots in turn copied the test pilots and so Yeager's voice
floated down and became the mold for all American aviation radio
communication.

I'd guess that the author is correct in that the controllers copied the
delivery of the voice of the space program from Houston, but those controllers
were usually former test pilots or members of the military flight programs
themselves, so we're probably still thinking of the same unflappable voice.

~~~
po
Here's good audio of that voice. Listen to Capt Sullenberger calmly tell the
tower "we're going to be in the Hudson"

[http://www.exosphere3d.com/pubwww/pages/project_gallery/cact...](http://www.exosphere3d.com/pubwww/pages/project_gallery/cactus_1549_hudson_river.html)

------
naz
Comic Sans MS, maroon on a beige background, this is what Readability was made
for.

~~~
shrikant
IMHO, I thought this was one of those occasions when the content and its
delivery trumped presentation.

~~~
mgedmin
The content is why I googled for the Readability bookmarklet instead of just
closing the browser tab.

------
da5e
I like the metaphor of being "ahead of the jet." as a term for mastery. I know
that feeling exactly sometimes.

~~~
blhack
There is a plane called a Beech Bonanza that is nicknamed "The doctor killer."

It gets this name because it's a single engine plane, which attracts wealthy
hobbyist pilots (like doctors) but it's _fast_. Much much faster than what
these hobbyist pilots are used to. This causes "the plane to get in front of
them", and for them to crash.

~~~
kwantam
In fairness, the other part of the killer reputation has to do with apparent
design instabilities as a result of the V-tail on the x35 models. Both these
and the x36 models really are beautiful planes.

Another airplane with the killer epithet because of its on average high power
to wisdom of pilot ratio is the Piper Malibu and its later brother the Mirage.
Again, a beautiful, fast, well-designed plane that gets out in front of you if
you let it.

Growing up, my father flew thousands of hours in both of these planes with me
in the right seat, and he was always careful to warn me about having respect
for the plane's power lest it get away from you. In a way, I think he was
reminding himself as much as me.

~~~
marquis
Would you please explain what is meant by "get out in front of you"? I have
very limited flying experience and am not familiar with what this means, in
pilot terms: i.e. what would you experience as a pilot, and what would be
happening to the airplane. Google didn't help in this matter.

~~~
run4yourlives
The aircraft is flying faster than it is taking you to process the changes
that are occurring during the flight.

There are a number of things you need to process as you fly, from radios to
maps to situational awareness. For less experienced pilots, or when you have
passengers than are pointing out all sorts of shit, this can take time. During
all this time the aircraft is moving and the condition is changing.

You need to not only know where you are now, but where you will be in the
future. If you lose this, you find the aircraft getting to places faster than
you can prepare for, and that can be nasty.

To relate, it's very similar to driving a car for the first time. There seems
to be so much more to check, from mirrors to gauges to the road. The reaction
for new drivers is to slow down to give yourself time to catch up.

Another analogy would be sports. If you play a team sport with those that have
played for years, you can find yourself reacting to things after they have
happened. This isn't because you don't know what to do, but more so because by
the time you've figured it out and acted, the event has already occurred.

~~~
nostrademons
Or for a geekier analogy, it's like StarCraft. When you first play, your APM
is low, so you build things slowly, collect fewer minerals, and produce fewer
troops. Then your opponent shows up on your doorstep with a much bigger force,
micros them well, and before you can even control your dudes, they're all
gone. And then you're like "Hey, what happened to my base? AAAAH I'm dead.
GG."

As you gain experience, you can spend much less cognitive attention paying
attention to what's going on in the game. So actions become reflexes, and
suddenly you're catching up. And then you run up against an opponent who's
like you were a couple months ago, and pwnage commences.

------
alanh
Submitted 7 months ago on a more readable, seemingly more original site.

<http://www.vfp62.com/SR-71.html>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1247709> (good amount of discussion)

~~~
nikcub
this is one of those stories that is re-submitted every 6 months or so and
everybody goes 'oooooooohhhhhhhh' and sends it to the top.

------
joe_bleau
The SR-71 flight manual is (mostly) online, if anyone is interested:
<http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/>

------
matwood
Great story! Those SR-71s were amazing machines in the air. On the ground was
a different story. I remember reading about how they leaked all sorts of
fluids on the ground because the body was designed to expand at the higher
altitudes and speeds. Amazing engineering.

------
peteri
stolen from [http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-
question-3.ht...](http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-
question-3.html#post5884568) Ancient tale.

There's this SR-71 Blackbird stooging around Cuba on a top-secret mission, at
FL500+ and Mach 2+.... when they get a call requesting them to change heading
"because of traffic at your altitude". Traffic at THEIR altitude ?? Anyway,
they comply, and shortly, yes, there's an Air France Concorde out of Caracas
(Air France flew there in the early days) slowly sailing across their flight
path.

Just imagine... two guys in bonedomes and full pressure suits, in a cramped
cockpit, watching something like a hundred people in shirt sleeves or summer
dresses, sipping their champagne and maybe just starting on their smoked
salmon hors d'oeuvres, flying at their altitude and nearly their speed....

------
dfghjkhgbfd
There is a similar one of an SR71 tooling around over Cuba at god-knows-what
1000s of feet being asked to move to make way for another airplane. A Concorde
goes past, with people in shirt sleeves happily sipping their champagne.

------
davidmurphy
The SR-71 Blackbird went from LA to DC in around an hour. Imagine if (when) a
passenger jet could go that fast -- it would transform our country.

Pop over to the East Coast for the day, head home in time for dinner.

~~~
nikcub
People aren't willing to pay extra for speed, which makes the planes
uneconomical. And now with wifi, internet and an entire office on a plane,
there is even less emphasis on getting there faster.

~~~
evgen
Civilian aircraft are also not allowed to go supersonic over the continental
US, which killed the Concorde for domestic routes among other reasons...

------
findm
man thats so bad ass

~~~
findm
hey? whyd you down vote me?

~~~
steven_h
Your were probably down voted because your comment added nothing to the
discussion and those types of comments are generally discouraged on HN.

------
16s
Walter spoke: "Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed
check?" There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday
request.

"Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots,
across the ground."

