Low Altitude Performance

[PR19_Kit]

  Hence the claim that they were laid down in shipyards, rather than built on a production line.

And machined from solid forgings of HUGE size as well.......... 

.....so there's no truth in the rumours that Buccaneers  were  quarried from solid unobtainium blocks. 

The S1s were, but were so dense that they didn't fly so well, and thus the S2 with the Spey engines. The quarries couldn't carve the blocks accurately, they produced too much flash, thus the over-weight condition.

The S2's main forgings, which were around 70 ft long x 45 ft wide x 20 ft high, and were at the time the largest unobtanium forgings ever made, were shipped in by barge on the Humber and then machined in the Brough works main hanger. Both the S1s and S2s were all trucked to Holme-on-Spalding-Moor for their first flights as the runway at Brough was too short, being only 3000 ft long and effectively shortened even more by Blackburn having built an extension to the design office right across the threshold! A proposal to install a catapult on the runway was scotched when the costs of the associated steam plant required were evaluated.....

(Take a look at the place on Google Earth and see what I mean about the design office extension.......)

[jcf]

My understanding is that the steam plant was canceled because they determined that only a large nuclear reactor
would be able to produce the required volumes quickly enough. 

[Weaver]

I can distinctly remember my Wife's brother talking about the 'hell' of flying fast and low in his F-15E. Superglue your fillings back in was one term he used.

When they were in the early stages of TSR.2, they flew a Canberra low over the Libyan desert to research the low level environment. Can't remember the exact figures they got, but they were in two digits and the units were half-gee-vertical-accelerations-per-minute.....

[rickshaw]

Rickshaw

Air density is considerably higher at sea level.  The higher the air density, the greater the friction, the greater the heat generated.

Is there any formula to determine air temperature from airspeed/mach at sea level?  I remember a crude formula which was used for this purpose that I just forgot.

If you remember it, Kendra/Robyn, you haven't forgotten it.   

[KJ_Lesnick]

rickshaw

Okay, let me rephrase: I remember the existence of the formula.  I do not remember the exact formula.

Do you have anything?

[wuzak]

Google....

[KJ_Lesnick]

I can't seem to find anything of use... I think it had to do with mach number, air temperature, and there might have been a 100 in the formula

[eatthis]

so does anybody know what the sr71s top speed is on the deck?

[PR19_Kit]

so does anybody know what the sr71s top speed is on the deck?

Did they ever try and find out? What would have been the point?

[Rheged]

so does anybody know what the sr71s top speed is on the deck?

I think that "sufficient"  will do as an answer.        It's allegedly what Rolls Royce used to say about their car engines power output, if asked.

[tahsin]

Well, surely based on Ben Rich's comments on destroying Baghdad with sonic booms. By the supposed flights of SR-71s at Mach 3.0... O was it 3.5?

[KJ_Lesnick]

From what I remember, Robert Widmer, before he died made a comment about the Convair Kingfish being able of doing 6.25 to 6.5 @ 125000 feet: Since the two planes were often considered comparable, this would imply a similar top-speed.

As for the capability down-low, the speed gauge seemed to go into the high hundreds so it's possible that 600-900 kts might be do-able.  However an F-105 could do this too

[tahsin]

So, America now wonders whether SR-71 has advanced in its advanced years? Isn't a rather big step to say the Blackbird could do Mach 6?

[KJ_Lesnick]

tahsin

Because the numbers were previously classified and 3.2 was what they listed

[tahsin]

Really? I thought from one thread in somewhere else some guy proved at anything more than Mach 4 , the shockwaves would enter the intake to make it all impossible. Where the legend has it that some other guy by mistake claimed 50 000 meters as the ceiling and disappeared. Will the Federal Goverment go back and make the first of the some guys mentioned and make him eat his words, allowing no comeback that any Mach 6 Blackbird can only be the one in the Transformers movie?