Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote:
I'm not saying there's no compromising floating around. When I was
working on the SR-71 I wanted to instrument the outboard ailerons,
which was a real problem because the wiring had to run through the
hottest part of the wing, snaking forward and then back in a very
limited space. I started by asking to have both surfaces instrumented
throughout the flight envelope. The instrumentation engineer and I
went over the problems and the requirements and we ended up
instrumenting one side only (and also putting in one accelerometer
for the structures guy, who was piggy-backing on my determination to
get my data) and accepting that we'd get good data on the early,
low-speed points and wouldn't worry if the wire jacket burned off at
the higher speeds. As it turned out, the wiring held up throughout
all the points and we did discover an appreciable lag between the
inboard and the outboard surfaces, which is why I wanted the
instrumentation.

What were you using for insulation on the wires...Teflon?
You should have gone completly retro and used either woven asbestos or
glass fiber, like in 1930's house wiring.


My career certainly wasn't in jeopardy in any way. It wasn't even in
jeopardy when I told the safety review board that flying the SR-71
with LASRE on the back would mean extending the time that we flew
below Vmc by two seconds.

It's time that the Blackbird met JATO; grab those surplus camera pod
pylons off of the YF-12, and hang big JATO bottles on them. ;-)
It's really too bad that they couldn't get up to over Mach 1 with LASRE
attached. Maybe they should have gone the D-21 route and actually used
the engine to drive the aircraft through Mach 1.
Come to think of it, that would give you a lot of good data about its
performance in the transonic range, as the shockwaves formed around it.

Actually, first I had to tell them we'd
been taking off at such a heavy weight that we were below Vmc on every
takeoff and if we ever blew out an engine just after takeoff we'd have
lost the airplane and probably killed the crew. I had to get one of
the crew to come confirm that to them, in fact.

Key..._V,V,LR_ (Very, Very, Long Runway) and taking off at well under
engine max thrust.
Sounds like a job made in heaven for Edwards.

Pat