On Dec 21, 2014, at 3:29 AM, Scott wrote: From: "Scott Ritchey" <ritche...@nc.rr.com> Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT White guys in white short sleeve shirts with short haircuts and slide rules Date: December 20, 2014 6:47:44 PM PST To: "'Rich Thomas'" <richthomas79td...@constructivity.net>, "'Mercedes Discussion List'" <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
As shown in the video, pressure recovery at the inlet was critical to generating thrust. If the analog computer burped and misplaced the inlet spike, the resulting drop in thrust was dramatic. This event was called an inlet unstart. The resulting violent yaw motion was the faster than human reflexes. In the early days, the SR yaw autopilot had limited authority and an unstart produced extremely violent motion at the cockpit (which was way forward at the end of a long moment arm). I believe at least one SR disintegrated inflight when the yaw from an unstart exceeded aircraft structural limits. Later in the program, better flight and engine controls mitigated the unstart problem. The SR stands as a tribute to the men (and women) who built and flew it. Those folks knew that anything worthwhile involved risk. Wikipedia has a decent article on this amazing aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Accidents_and_aircraft _disposition Scott The pilot of that SR unstart incident, a test pilot for Lockheed at the time of the accident, is a friend of mine. He was thrown clear when the jet came apart but his systems, operator was killed. He went back to flying and, up until just recently, he was flying the L-1011 launch jet for Orbital Sciences satellite launches. Addison CL-500 _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
