Quote:
Originally posted by Ziroc:
My favorite USAF Jet is the Blackbird! And most are just sitting around rusting out.. not in service.. those suckers could reach the closest to the earths orbit.. (It was the Blackbird right?)
Ziroc
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The Blackbird is the nickname for the SR-71. They were all retired in the 80s, but some were brought out of retirement for service in the Balkans (lower level recon a/c were getting tracked and shot at by SAMs and shoulder-launch rockets). Not really sure if any are still in service or not though.
Good story regarding the SR-71. My old man is a retired Air Traffic Controller. One time when he was working high altitude airspace, he was contacted by a SR-71 pilot for some sort of routine instrumentation check that he needed help with (typically, ATC knows when these guys are around...but they are under military control and typically radio silence is observed unless the pilot initiates with Civilian ATC or something dire drives civ. ATC to contact him/her).
My Dad asked the pilot to say what his altitude was. The pilot responded that that info. is "need to know" and why does he want to know. My old man then proceeded to make some smart-ass ficticious remark about a Cessna 172 flying somewhere in the area and that they didn't want him to collide with the Blackbird. He said that pilot laughed and said something like, "Well, if he makes it up to 87,000 feet then let me know and I'll go evasive.".
Whew! Can you even imagine being at 87,000 feet? Most commercial traffic stays around 30,000 feet"ish", and the highest I've ever piloted an a/c was about 12,000. Yikes!
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Now where did I leave that doughnut?!