1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

The speed check story by one of the SR-71 pilots is one of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyHH9G9et0&ab_channel=JanJohnson

 

haha yeah I've seen that one. Such a crazy feat of engineering especially when you consider that it was designed and built without any aid from computers.

Also the fact that the CIA got all the titanium to build the SR71s and prototypes by creating dummy corporations all over the world to buy it from Russia, so that we could build the plane needed to spy on them during the Cold War lol.

 

Loved this book too


Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

$22 Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011M8DBI6

 

Freakin' Lockheed rejected me haha. I applied there.

I actually have one of their old binders I use for the Bayliner documentation. I found it at a thrift shop by Lockheed in Santa Clara.

 

I almost got that book awhile ago, might have to now. The F-117 was also really cool not anywhere as badass as the SR71. F-117 required all kinds of computer controlled assistance to fly because of its design. Pilots called it the Wobble Goblin apparently

 

Yeah sr71 is my favorite, that book focuses more on how they pulled it off the u2, 71 and 117 from a development perspective. Skunk works was a heck of a place to be then.

 

Seriously...would've loved to have been near those AFBs where they tested and flew them out of back then.

 

I'm actually removing mine soon and replacing with tile. Only had it 2.5 years and I've got irrecoverable scuffs everywhere, bowing, and even a couple cracks.

 

Can only imagine the crazy secrecy around those projects. Going to work and fiddling with things like the movable cone on those engines, and then not getting to tell all my friends at home would probably break me .

 

definitely explains why there were so many UFO claims from the 60s and 70s....people seeing crazy ass top secret classified aircraft flying around having no clue or reference to what it really was.

 

Doesn't explain the butt probing

 

that was intended to make them keep quiet about it

 

Imagine having that job in the CIA...

"Bill, some rednecks saw a Blackbird prototype go down in a field in Kansas. We need you to put on this alien costume, drug 'em and probe them up the ass"

 

And it continues!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)

 

"Don't threaten me with a good time" is starting to make a whole lot more sense now

 

Yeah the beginning of the new Top Gun movie where he's a test pilot for that Mach 9 plane ("Darkstar" I think) is supposedly based on that

edit - or maybe it's the SR-72 concept that's also linked in that article

 

@Wulf guessing you weren't serious about the F150 trail raisin, and this seems a little sus, but just in case...

https://denver.craigslist.org/cto/d/denver-1997-ford-150/7513854604.html

 

Yeah the price is a little low

I'm curious how this gen compares to the 2nd/3rd gen Tacos front diff and CVs

https://boulder.craigslist.org/ctd/d/longmont-2019-ford-150-4x4-4wd-f150-xlt/7508259539.html