Lockheed SR 71 Blackbird

simply stated Lockheed sr-71 Blackbird is the fastest highest flying jet airplane ever built it can fly from sea to shining sea in only an hour now what you may wonder is such an exotic military airplane doing on wonderful world of flying although this exotic spy plane was retired from the Air Force in 1990 a trio of black birds were given to NASA for high-speed high-altitude research in other words they're among the latest additions to the general aviation fleet well sort of only 32 of these sinister-looking machines were built twelve were lost in tests and accidents the Blackbird carries a crew of two a pilot and a reconnaissance systems officer who manages the astro inertial navigation system various sensors and the electronic defensive systems which I think can be used to guard against the FAA the Blackbird is about the size of a dc9 it has a maximum gross weight of 152 thousand pounds but more than half of that is fuel this nose boom contains the pitot tube and static pressure sources and this probe senses the direction of the airflow in other words it senses the side slip angle and the angle of attack this blended forward wing is called a chine and it gives the aircraft its Cobra like appearance it extends from the nose back to the leading edge of the wing running about 40% of the length of the aircraft the chine acts like a fixed canard and contributes substantial lift and stability at high speed the Blackbird is powered by a pair of pratt and whitney jt8d - 20 engines known in military circles as j58 when operated in afterburner each engine produces 30 2500 pounds of thrust at sea level this cover is here for a reason the tip of this inlet spike is sharp really sharp jet engines don't run very well on supersonic air so you have to slow the air down before allowing it to enter the engine and that's what this Inlet spike does as aircraft speed increases the spike moves rearward this prevents the engine from ingesting the supersonic shock wave otherwise the engine will flame out which at Mach three can create a violent yaw that is guaranteed to grab your attention the Blackbird has a pair of biconvex Delta wings that have a leading edge sweep of 53 degrees the wings also serve as fuel tanks in other words the skin of these wings form the upper and lower walls of the wing tanks but these aren't just regular wet wings these wings get real with you see this seam in the leading edge of the wing while the airplane is loaded with them fuel frequently will seep out of such joints and seams and form pools of fuel beneath parked blackbirds but during flight at three times the speed of sound the friction and compression of the air creates tremendous heat this heat causes the structure to expand by almost six inches this tightens the seams and prevents fuel from leaking in flight at Mach 3 the temperature of the Blackbird skin varies from 400 to 1200 degrees Fahrenheit so one thing that sr-71 pilots don't have to worry about is structural icing as a matter of fact the skin gets so hot that nobody has to worry about cleaning bird poop from the airplane the structure gets so hot that it acts like a self-cleaning oven and burns off the stuff during flight trouble is decals get burned off too this explains why 93% of the Blackbirds weight consists of titanium alloy aluminum gets too weak at such high temperatures this also is why the airplane is painted with high emissivity paint this black paint radiates heat almost three times as much as bare metal the main gear tires are impregnated with aluminium powder this helps them to reflect airframe heat during flight and keeps the rubber relatively cool the tires by the way are inflated with nitrogen at a pressure of more than 400 pounds per square inch now that makes them as hard as a rock the dual rudders are very much like vertical stabilizers they're canted 15 degrees inboard to help reduce undesirable rolling moments like other delta wing airplanes the sr-71 does not have conventional ailerons and elevators instead the Blackbird has four elephant's on the trailing edge of the wing that combine pitch and roll functions when the stick is moved to one side the elephant's act as ailerons when the stick is moved fore-and-aft they act as elevators but when the stick is used to command a climbing right turn for example the elephant's combine functions to produce the desired results you would expect such a fast airplane to have smooth wings the trouble is when smooth surfaces get too hot they curl like potato chips this is why longitudinal corrugations just like those on a try motor Ford are used to add strength to the upper wing panels and alleviate thermal expansion due to heat soaking when viewing the aircraft from the side it looks as though the pilot is sitting on the tip of a missile but from this perspective it looks as though you're sitting at the end of a sword that slices its way through the air the jp-7 fuel used on this airplane has such a high flash point that normal ignition systems will just can't ignite it instead a special chemical triangle boring or TB is injected into the fuel during the starting process and this causes the fuel to ignite with a green flash remember you don't want to use ordinary fuel in this airplane because the high temperature of the wings during flight might cause the fuel to ignite in the tanks and that would be bad news Rommels up laughter burn staring up to 120 knots 250 knots rotated 10 degrees without a 200 to 30 knots Kirra on a hurry can't exceed the geared limit speed of 300 knots kick a take-off at a Blackburn is made with a reduced fuel load I know it sounds strange but a fully loaded sr-71 can't climb out of ground effect at low speed in case of an engine failure on a hot day so the first thing we have to do now is find the tanker for some banana refuelling initial climb rate of the sr-71 is 10,000 feet per minute at an indicated airspeed of 500 knots then I'm not s eyes pegged out but believe me we're going up in almost two miles per minute just take a look at this altimeter it takes only three minutes for brake release to reach the typical refueling altitude of 26,000 feet refueling usually is done at 350 knots while the tanks are topped at 5500 pounds per minute the transition from subsonic to supersonic flight usually begins at about 35,000 feet and incorporates a maneuver called the the dipsy-doodle we're going to begin a descent of about 2,500 feet per minute at an indicated airspeed of 450 knots until we go through Mach and one and Mach 1.25 we'll pull the nose up and resume on climate 450 knots flying at three times a speed of sound at 80,000 feet the SAS 71 is in its own private sky there's no traffic up here nor could there be so there's no front of a mid-air collision except perhaps with a weather balloon that can be a real hazard by the time you see one on a collision course it's probably too late to avoid but the performance of the sr-71 was still top secret privates used to turn off their transponders above 60,000 feet so that controllers wouldn't know how high they were high speed aircraft don't turn very well and this requires that a black foot pilot plan would hey way ahead an affiliate agree bank turn it Mach 3 for example turn rate is only three tenths of a degree per second to turn around a 180 degree turn takes almost 10 minutes and the team diameter would stretch for example from Dayton Ohio across Indiana all the way to Chicago only the Blackbird doesn't turn very well it should - barring a straight line very very well now cruising at 1,800 knots are almost 2,100 miles an hour the DME takes off a nautical mile every 2 seconds and to go this fast everything has to be in trim a blackbird pilot can look through this small periscope to make sure that the rudders are not offset and creating unnecessary drag the sr-71 is pressurized but not as much as a commercial jetliner at 75,000 feet for example the 5 psi differential pressure results in a cabin altitude of 25,000 feet Blackbeard is not a fire and it doesn't fly like 1 SEC sonically it feels like a big heavy lumbering airplane though is it very maneuverable and it can't take much of a load at Mach 3 the effort is limited to a load factor of only weird tenth of a g- and only we're gonna have G's positive the sr-71 has no flaps spoilers or speed brakes or leading-edge devices of any kind down one to 250 knots check gear down and locked base legged 230 knots and final at 175 it was up a little up to about 12 and a half degrees touchdown and hundred 55 knots very mistrust to private generally shoot at 60 knots so that it doesn't get tangled with the rudders well how is that for a rice well I guess you realized by now that I wasn't really flying this airplane I wasn't even in it for the ride but boy it sure would have been the ultimate $50 hamburger or should I say million dollar hamburger those who really fly the Blackbird at high altitude need the protection of a spacesuit to provide life-support in case of decompression or the need to eject these $100,000 suits are the same ones used by astronauts during the early shuttle missions except for placing cooling fans next to the brakes the ground crew knows to keep clear the aircraft until it's had a chance to cool down and this takes about a half an hour after that they get busy attending to the 650 items covered by seven post-flight checklist s' this is the sr-71 simulator that we use to videotape some of the instruments that you've just seen you know the Blackbird is a collection of superlatives and paradoxes some call it a guided missile with biological backup how fast or how high does she really fly I don't know but informed sources say that Blackbird probably has a sprint speed of twenty three hundred and fifty miles an hour and could do Mach 3.5 at 100,000 feet the Blackbird first flew in 1962 and was the world's fastest and highest flying jet airplane now thirty years later it still is it is unless those rumors are true about Lockheed building a Mach 6 aircraft codenamed Aurora could be only about a hundred and twenty five pilots have ever checked out in a blackbird it's a very exclusive club and it's a club I'd like to join so if you'll excuse me I need some practice

Channel: Marshall Ross Thompson

Views: 2,295,836

Rating: 4.762641 out of 5

Keywords: Lockheed Corporation (Aircraft Manufacturer), Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (Aircraft Model), Captain Barry Schiff, Wonderful World of flying, Marshall Ross Thompson, PRVIDEO.TV, Advanced video editing, advanced motion graphics, event coverage video production, event coverage photography, professional portrait photography, still photography, project management, video production & photography

Id: dG6gnJc6XeU

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2015