Need Haynes workshop Manual for my SR-71

I drive past the one on display in New York on the way to one of my customers. I wonder if it will *ever* stop looking like the coolest thing that ever flew?

And maybe, with the help of this exhaustive (160 pages!) book, me & the boys will get it started up and take it out for a ride.

I didn't have this bookmarked and had to search:

Hope your finances are good, "The numbers that I've been told by people that know is $38,000 per flying hour"

But the price of oil is down, so...

Mikek

Jim - this is a tremendous find! Now I'll be up all night reading it, but i t ought to give me more than enough info to get the bird off the ground. Th e really hard part is that it's on the deck of an aircraft carrier which is , in my estimation, somewhat shorter than the required 8,500 feet to get th e thing in the air. Of course, we could fire up the catapult, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, though, this is going to be some interesting reading, and it WIL L keep me up at night. Thanks for the link.

Used to work in Nevada City, east of Beal AFB. One day heading back to the shop from a nearby eatery, happened to look up and saw one glide by on approach. I swear, it made not a sound, and if I'd never seen one before, might have thought it a UFO at first glance. Flat black, silent, and moving very fast for a low altitude aircraft.

I do have, btw, a Haynes Shuttle manual, just in case I ever run across a deal on a used one...

Jon

Jim - this is a tremendous find! Now I'll be up all night reading it, but it ought to give me more than enough info to get the bird off the ground. The really hard part is that it's on the deck of an aircraft carrier which is, in my estimation, somewhat shorter than the required

8,500 feet to get the thing in the air. Of course, we could fire up the catapult, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, though, this is going to be some interesting reading, and it WILL keep me up at night. Thanks for the link.

==================

I wonder if the pilots really memorize and strictly observe all those temperature restrictions and limits. The CIT limit of 427C is easy if you're into hot Chevys but the others would confuse me, and I have four temperature readouts visible from this chair to monitor and respond to; indoors, outdoors, the basement wood stove and a pot heating on it.

-jsw

I don't like flying enough to deal with the upkeep on a Cessna 152.

I bet those have far better turn ratios than something like the SR-71.

A goose bump moment

On 01/18/2016 6:05 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote: ...

Years ago I hired a (near) kid fresh out of Air Force who had served as air traffic controller at Kadena while the Blackbirds were stationed there. He said (amongst other stories) they had only a _very_ limited time of a few minutes to get traffic cleared and them off the ground before they leaked so much fuel they wouldn't have enough to get to the refueling rendezvous point. It took getting to airspeed and resulting friction heating to expand and seal the tanks, apparently.

I worked at Offutt AFB as a contractor for almost 30 years. I was fortunate several times to be on base for a lot of one time events. One of them is when the Blackbird destined for the SAC museum flew in for its final flight. We all knew it was coming that day so it kinda felt like a pending air show. When he finally came in you could see his smoke trail what seemed 15 miles out. He came in with the landing gear down and when they just skimmed the runway he poured the cobs to it. I was facing him about a half mile from the end of the runway. I heard him then felt him. And then he was past me over my head. Anybody that's heard a fighter jet scorch past you knows that noise. Square it. He did at least a dozen repeats. We thought it was the pilot saying it was his plane and he's not giving it up. Later we found out he was to use up fuel until only the reserve was left. The fire dept didn't want to clean a big leaking mess.

Steve

A few times when I was on afternoon shift at NASA's Glenn Research Center, I helped out on the F-106 recovery team. The FAA required the F106 to have either an arresting cable or net when the runway was shorter than some amou nt, and Cleveland Hopkins was on the list.

So the crew set out an arresting cable held off the runway on 6" diameter r ubber pucks. The commercial aircraft were wary of it, many times they would ask control what they were about to taxi over. We had no arresting energy system, so the cable was hooked to a huge chain buried in asphalt. The link s were probably 12" long made of 2" bar stock. the chain was several hundre d feet long, and the asphalt trench ran along either side of the runway. Af ter the 106 landed, we unhooked its chute and packed it and the cable in ou r truck.

One time were were sitting there listening to Cliff (our pilot) call out po sitions. He was over western New York which meant he was only a few minutes away. Finally we saw him coming in over the fence, nose held high (they la nded hot and blind), when we heard, "no gear locked indicator". At that mom ent the 106 rotated to near vertical and Cliff went full AB right over our position. Holy crap! I can only imagine what the SR 71 sounded like.

We had the GASP hung on the belly of the 106 (Global Air Sampling Program) and we tracked the ash cloud from Mt St Helens until it dissipated over Eur ope.

Dennis

I think that you will find that they do although the instruments are marked with red and green tape to show the safe and unsafe readings.

I'm not sure about that. While I wasn't in the SR-71 Squadron at Beal we did do a certain amount of support work for them, and our Squadron Commander even went through the up-grading program and was qualified on them. I never heard that they allowed fuel leaks.

But, depending on a lot of things they might have been taking off with minimum fuel which would limit their time on the ground.

...

Well, I always wondered but he swore was true. So, I just did some looking and whaddya' know...

"In order for the SR-71 to fly the worldwide missions, it has a special fleet of modified KC-135Q tankers for refueling. SR-71s run on JP-7 fuel, that fills the six large tanks in the fuselage. The component parts of the Blackbird fit very loosely together to allow for expansion at high temperatures. At rest on the ground, fuel leaks out constantly, since the tanks in the fuselage and wings only seal at operating temperatures. There is little danger of fire since the JP-7 fuel is very stable with an extremely high flash point."

From the page at

...

He said when it came time to roll 'em out, _everything_ else other than perhaps an immediate emergency landing took second fiddle 'til they were airborne (and if that aircraft could make one more fly around, it'd probably wait, too! ;) ).

Having been an air traffic controller, his tendency to not hesitate in making a decision was certainly quite out of the norm of most young engineers who had just graduated and taken their first employment (he had dropped out and done his tour prior to returning to school and, this time, doing well in getting his degree with honors). I became quite accustomed to "Please stand by!" when he was engrossed in a task and I wanted something. :)

Yes, I read that but when the SR's first came to Beal the squadron was not fully manned and we (SAC) provided some basic support - sheetmetal, welding, machine shop, hydraulic, etc. What the A.F. called Field Maintenance. I have been near them when they start but never say any fuel drizzling out of them. But, they did fly a lot of short, say 30 minute, flights which would mean that they had a very small fuel load aboard. The Take off, climb to altitude and refuel was a fairly standard technique as a jet engine uses a huge amount of fuel at low altitudes so taking off with a very light fuel load and then refuel at some intermediate altitude was pretty standard. The B-52's did it on all long missions and I assume that is what the SR's did also as they flew Beal to Okinawa in one jump.

Not to make light of anything but controlling the local flight pattern is a pretty routine practice. When the U-2's landed or took off they cleared the pattern and the main runway had pickup trucks running up and down it. When the F-4's practiced tail hook landings they cleared the pattern, when the B-52's took off, one airplane every 60 seconds, they cleared the pattern.

On 01/19/2016 6:31 AM, John B. wrote: ...

Of course it is; that was the whole point. The size/complexity of Kadena dwarfs Beale, however...

Possibly :-) But when the Black Birds were flying there, which was in the late 1960's if I remember correctly, Kadena wasn't really a hub of activity.