Egg Me On...

I've still got a United Air Lines DC-10 from 1976 on my shelf - something cute about those suckers!

Cookie Sewell

"Rufus" skrev i en meddelelse news:unqpj.14354$9j6.13736@attbi_s22...

Got it :-)

And it is cute.

these things are great. were they kits?

Craig

these things are great. were they kits?

Yes. As far as I remember they came 'round 1980.

snipped-for-privacy@v67g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

Yes, the first series were all airliners and came out in 1976, but the later ones were more recognizable military aircraft and as noted appeared about 1980.

Cookie Sewell

With regard to the "proper" SR-71 at the top of the page, aren't the high visibility markings a bit of a contradiction?

(kim)

Hmmmm, with a flying altitude of +30 km I would not be able to see any marking at all.

A Soviet interceptor might.

(kim)

If the interceptor can operate at ~85,000 feet, but the Russian's latest and last interceptor is the MiG-31, which only has a service ceiling of ~68,000 feet, which is about 3 miles short of 85,000 feet.

might be a sam, no?

If I were up there and I saw an other plane (any other plane) I would surely expect it to be a hostile one markings or not.

It would have to be way up there...when asked what the maximum ceiling of a SR-71 was, the Air Force used to reply "over 70,000 feet". I've got a SR-71 pilot's manual...actual max ceiling was 102,000 feet. A MiG- 25 could have gotten near it as far as altitude went, but the Blackbird could outrun it by around 300 mph - the SR-71's do-not-exceed speed in cruise was Mach 3.2. Although people think that the A-12s and SR-71s overflew the Soviet Union, that's not the case. They would fly along its borders and look into the country with their cameras and sensors. The political fallout of the Gary Powers shoot-down was severe enough that that put the kibosh on manned overflights of the USSR permanently, other than aircraft flying at low speed and altitude crossing over its borders for a few minutes. Besides which, by the time they got into service, recon satellites could do a lot of the same things that the Blackbirds could do in a lot less confrontational manner. If you're interested, there's a formerly classified history of the development of the A-12 and SR-71 here, including information on testing out fuel additives and sheathing the aircraft in a ion cloud to reduce its radar return:

The MiG-25 Foxbat could hit 90,000 ft although one zoom-climbed to

The only SAM they had that might have been able to hit it was this monster:

not that long, but there sure is a lot of motor. 6 to a launcher, it must be an area defense unit,

Yup, those were designed for area defense of important target regions (cities, etc) to guard them against B-58 and B-70 attacks. There's video of one being launched here:

that's a real honker. they still active in roosha?

I don't think so; they replaced them them with a lot more formidable missiles of the SA-12B "Giant" series using smaller guidance systems and better solid propellants, and they were mobile. The newest one is the SA-21: