WELCOME TO RIVER DAVES PLACE

698.5 mph on the GPS yesterday. What’s the fastest you have gone?

MeCasa16

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I was flying from LAX to EWR with a whopping 5 passengers in a 737-900.
41,000 ft and a screaming tail wind pushing us along. Some interesting fun facts for those of you who might care while you’re stuck at home. Our indicated airspeed at that altitude was only about 230kts. Our true airspeed corrected for altitude and temperature was 441kts. You can see that in the GPS shot above. The tailwind was pushing hard and bumped our groundspeed up to the 607kts, which is 698.5mph. Flight time was 4 hours and 7 minutes. I was thankful for the quick flight since I left at 10:15pm. We burned just over 20,000lbs of fuel. I can just feel Greta’s displeasure.

I had to stay in that cesspool of Corona for 11 hours, and then flew a whopping 4 passengers back to LAX. This time we were working against the jet stream.
0BD9A630-49AB-4BD5-A4EB-E421697C4894.jpeg
DD78AF3D-45BE-4F5C-BDDB-27D80380CAE6.jpeg
40,000ft, 238 kts indicated airspeed, 444 kts true airspeed, and 303 kts over the ground. That’s 348.6 mph. It took us 6 hours 10 minutes, and we burned a little over 30,000lbs of fuel. This flight I was in a 737-800. It burns about 2500lbs of fuel a side per hour. The temperature up there was -63 Celsius. The reason we measure fuel in lbs is because the fuel contracts and expands so much with temperature changes. The weight is consistent. We use an average weight of 6lbs for one gallon of jet fuel. We burned 52,000lbs of jet fuel to move 9 pax across the country. That’s 8,667 gallons.
 

77hallett

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Holy hell you guys burn just as much per hour as we do. 4,500 per hour, with a max fuel load of just over 61k pounds. Great discussion though on the differences with TAS, IAS, and GS. If you ever hear a King or Royal call sign that’s us 👍🏼
 

rrrr

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Thanks for the interesting post. My fastest flight as PIC was in a Commander 690B way back in 1983. On a flight from the now disappeared Andrau Airpark in West Houston to Biloxi, we hit 437 kts, which is 502 MPH. The tailwind of 175 MPH was a big kicker that day.

On the way back, we chose a much lower altitude trying to find less of a headwind, and our ground speed was just over 200 MPH.
 

rrrr

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I'd love to take a flight sitting in the left seat of a Herky Bird.
 

Wicky

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View attachment 859985

I was flying from LAX to EWR with a whopping 5 passengers in a 737-900.
41,000 ft and a screaming tail wind pushing us along. Some interesting fun facts for those of you who might care while you’re stuck at home. Our indicated airspeed at that altitude was only about 230kts. Our true airspeed corrected for altitude and temperature was 441kts. You can see that in the GPS shot above. The tailwind was pushing hard and bumped our groundspeed up to the 607kts, which is 698.5mph. Flight time was 4 hours and 7 minutes. I was thankful for the quick flight since I left at 10:15pm. We burned just over 20,000lbs of fuel. I can just feel Greta’s displeasure.

I had to stay in that cesspool of Corona for 11 hours, and then flew a whopping 4 passengers back to LAX. This time we were working against the jet stream.
View attachment 859987 View attachment 859988 40,000ft, 238 kts indicated airspeed, 444 kts true airspeed, and 303 kts over the ground. That’s 348.6 mph. It took us 6 hours 10 minutes, and we burned a little over 30,000lbs of fuel. This flight I was in a 737-800. It burns about 2500lbs of fuel a side per hour. The temperature up there was -63 Celsius. The reason we measure fuel in lbs is because the fuel contracts and expands so much with temperature changes. The weight is consistent. We use an average weight of 6lbs for one gallon of jet fuel. We burned 52,000lbs of jet fuel to move 9 pax across the country. That’s 8,667 gallons.
Beats the hell out of driving and germing up on gas pumps.
 

mjc

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My Brother in law works for SWA and told me the other day the first plane in 30 years came in with no checked bags in it. Not many people flying now days.
 

SkyDirtWaterguy

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View attachment 859985

I was flying from LAX to EWR with a whopping 5 passengers in a 737-900.
41,000 ft and a screaming tail wind pushing us along. Some interesting fun facts for those of you who might care while you’re stuck at home. Our indicated airspeed at that altitude was only about 230kts. Our true airspeed corrected for altitude and temperature was 441kts. You can see that in the GPS shot above. The tailwind was pushing hard and bumped our groundspeed up to the 607kts, which is 698.5mph. Flight time was 4 hours and 7 minutes. I was thankful for the quick flight since I left at 10:15pm. We burned just over 20,000lbs of fuel. I can just feel Greta’s displeasure.

I had to stay in that cesspool of Corona for 11 hours, and then flew a whopping 4 passengers back to LAX. This time we were working against the jet stream.
View attachment 859987 View attachment 859988 40,000ft, 238 kts indicated airspeed, 444 kts true airspeed, and 303 kts over the ground. That’s 348.6 mph. It took us 6 hours 10 minutes, and we burned a little over 30,000lbs of fuel. This flight I was in a 737-800. It burns about 2500lbs of fuel a side per hour. The temperature up there was -63 Celsius. The reason we measure fuel in lbs is because the fuel contracts and expands so much with temperature changes. The weight is consistent. We use an average weight of 6lbs for one gallon of jet fuel. We burned 52,000lbs of jet fuel to move 9 pax across the country. That’s 8,667 gallons.
I had a similar experience yesterday LAX-DTW-LAX. You know things are bad out here when you can take a 737-900 straight to FL410
 
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Kachina26

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Now I wonder which one of you flew me home a few weeks ago.
 

poncho

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MeCasa16,

I fly several times a year for work mainly. My routine route is Seattle to Boston and back. Flight time from Seattle is 5.5 hours but returning its 6.5 hours, is there always a prevailing wind on the route?
We have landed early more times than I care to count only to find we have no gate, why don't they just slow down, you go from excited about getting in early to sitting somewhere for up to an hour.
I have no doubt there is a reason, maybe fuel savings?

Thanks
 

jet496

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115 in a DCB boat at Lake Vincente of all places.
 

MeCasa16

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MeCasa16,

I fly several times a year for work mainly. My routine route is Seattle to Boston and back. Flight time from Seattle is 5.5 hours but returning its 6.5 hours, is there always a prevailing wind on the route?
We have landed early more times than I care to count only to find we have no gate, why don't they just slow down, you go from excited about getting in early to sitting somewhere for up to an hour.
I have no doubt there is a reason, maybe fuel savings?

Thanks

As far as the wind goes, you can usually bank on an extra 50 mph going east and losing 50 mph going west. Weather systems constantly change that equation, and it the winter months it is more common to see the jet streams dip further south over the continental US. This is why we see wind speeds around 170 kts getting down to altitudes as low as 36,000 ft.

The gate issue is something that pisses us pilots off just as much as it does the passengers. The real problem is congestion. They just don't have enough gates in Seattle for the amount of traffic they have. Especially with the construction going on, and losing all the gates at the North terminal. The gate controllers plan as best they can going off of scheduled arrival and departure times. They have to plan the arriving plane usually within 10 minutes of the previous planes departure. This doesn't leave much wiggle room for unplanned issues. We have so many moving parts involved with getting off the gate on time. I'll give you just a few: Maintenance issues, the fuel truck, catering, passenger and customer service issues, bag loading, the Lavatory dumping and servicing, the potable water service, De-icing when needed, and then we have central load planning that calculates our weight and balance after the final passenger and bag counts come in. As pilots, we are the only person making sure all of those moving parts come together. When we are in the air, we only know what gate we are scheduled to come into, we don't know if our gate is occupied, or open. We typically just try to make up as much time as we can, especially if its our last leg and we are going home after we land. The gate controllers will look at our arrival time and try to move us to an open gate if they can, but that opens up a new logistical nightmare with trying to get all the checked bags changed over to the new gate. Clear as mud, I know.
 

Trash

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MeCasa16,

I fly several times a year for work mainly. My routine route is Seattle to Boston and back. Flight time from Seattle is 5.5 hours but returning its 6.5 hours, is there always a prevailing wind on the route?
We have landed early more times than I care to count only to find we have no gate, why don't they just slow down, you go from excited about getting in early to sitting somewhere for up to an hour.
I have no doubt there is a reason, maybe fuel savings?

Thanks

Yes there is virtually always a prevailing wind. Just gets more extreme in the winter months.

Regarding slowing down in flight for anticipated early arrivals: Believe it or not sometimes you just can't slow down enough to chew up that time. In addition, is it cheaper to fly an extra 30 minutes burning say 7000 lbs /hr or wait on the ground burning 800-1000 lbs / hr?
 

poncho

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As far as the wind goes, you can usually bank on an extra 50 mph going east and losing 50 mph going west. Weather systems constantly change that equation, and it the winter months it is more common to see the jet streams dip further south over the continental US. This is why we see wind speeds around 170 kts getting down to altitudes as low as 36,000 ft.

The gate issue is something that pisses us pilots off just as much as it does the passengers. The real problem is congestion. They just don't have enough gates in Seattle for the amount of traffic they have. Especially with the construction going on, and losing all the gates at the North terminal. The gate controllers plan as best they can going off of scheduled arrival and departure times. They have to plan the arriving plane usually within 10 minutes of the previous planes departure. This doesn't leave much wiggle room for unplanned issues. We have so many moving parts involved with getting off the gate on time. I'll give you just a few: Maintenance issues, the fuel truck, catering, passenger and customer service issues, bag loading, the Lavatory dumping and servicing, the potable water service, De-icing when needed, and then we have central load planning that calculates our weight and balance after the final passenger and bag counts come in. As pilots, we are the only person making sure all of those moving parts come together. When we are in the air, we only know what gate we are scheduled to come into, we don't know if our gate is occupied, or open. We typically just try to make up as much time as we can, especially if its our last leg and we are going home after we land. The gate controllers will look at our arrival time and try to move us to an open gate if they can, but that opens up a new logistical nightmare with trying to get all the checked bags changed over to the new gate. Clear as mud, I know.

My last flight into Seattle we landed early, ended up at a different gate than original half hour past arrival time. Got down to baggage claim, our flight was not on the board so I asked the agent and she said #15 but there are 3 flights ahead of you at that claim. I got on the rental car shuttle an hour and a half after landing.
I tell people Seattle is the worst airport I fly through, even the TSA pre check line is a shit show, signed up for Clear my last time through, it's worth it to me.
Thanks for the reply.
 

Sleek-Jet

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Holy hell you guys burn just as much per hour as we do. 4,500 per hour, with a max fuel load of just over 61k pounds. Great discussion though on the differences with TAS, IAS, and GS. If you ever hear a King or Royal call sign that’s us 👍🏼

Hard to beat a turbo prop for specific fuel consumption.

Thanks for the peak behind the cockpit door Me
Casa.
 

Hallett Dave

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Shoot, we are just hanging on the props trying to get to FL280

Ron, rrr, may remember my post of my experience in the back seat of an F-106 Delta Dart back in the early 1980s.
Fresno ANG was still flying the Delta Dart. To make a long story short I was rewarded with a back seat ride for helping FANG with an operational readiness exercise flown in R-2508 Complex.
We launched out of Edwards AFB. In less than 5 minutes we were @ 50,000 ft flying west to east in the High Super Sonic Corridor (HSSC).
I looked at the Mach Meter and before I new it we were at 1.7 Mach. Major Tishner showed me the effectiveness of the air brake and and we were suddenly
@1.3 Mach. He let me take the controls. He continued to decelerate and we were soon subsonic and I descended to FL300.
He let me do a few rolls and I continued to descend to 10,000 feet AGL heading for the dunes at the the northern end of Panamint Valley MOA.
The Maj took the controls and proceeded to take me on a most intensive flight at 2,000 feet AGL flying at 600 Knots.
The canyon walls go by fast.
Probably the best back seat ride I have ever had.
May the Lord be with all the pilots I have known over the years and especially those I have had the opportunity to fly with. :cool:
 

LAZARUS

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So back to the OP, so from what I'm reading it averaged out to about 1,000 gallons of fuel per customer? How much is jet fuel and how long can airlines do this? When do they say "shut it down"?
 

wettrthebettr

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110 MPH on my Harley, and my cheeks were flapping in the wind.
 

SkyDirtWaterguy

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So back to the OP, so from what I'm reading it averaged out to about 1,000 gallons of fuel per customer? How much is jet fuel and how long can airlines do this? When do they say "shut it down"?
My airline is paying about $.80/gal for jet fuel right now. Yes, that’s right. Point 80 cents/gal. Where can I get some diesel fuel this cheap? Buy a shit ton of it I guess....
 
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MeCasa16

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So back to the OP, so from what I'm reading it averaged out to about 1,000 gallons of fuel per customer? How much is jet fuel and how long can airlines do this? When do they say "shut it down"?

All the airlines are in the process of making drastic cuts and parking airplanes. You’re going to see a reduction of 70-80% of flights over the next two months and probably even longer. There are hundreds of airplanes just parked on runways at several major airports around the country. This is about as bad as the industry has ever seen. The bailout bill is guaranteeing my job until sept 30th. After that, I’ll probably be wondering who is hiring around here...
 

77hallett

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Ron, rrr, may remember my post of my experience in the back seat of an F-106 Delta Dart back in the early 1980s.
Fresno ANG was still flying the Delta Dart. To make a long story short I was rewarded with a back seat ride for helping FANG with an operational readiness exercise flown in R-2508 Complex.
We launched out of Edwards AFB. In less than 5 minutes we were @ 50,000 ft flying west to east in the High Super Sonic Corridor (HSSC).
I looked at the Mach Meter and before I new it we were at 1.7 Mach. Major Tishner showed me the effectiveness of the air brake and and we were suddenly
@1.3 Mach. He let me take the controls. He continued to decelerate and we were soon subsonic and I descended to FL300.
He let me do a few rolls and I continued to descend to 10,000 feet AGL heading for the dunes at the the northern end of Panamint Valley MOA.
The Maj took the controls and proceeded to take me on a most intensive flight at 2,000 feet AGL flying at 600 Knots.
The canyon walls go by fast.
Probably the best back seat ride I have ever had.
May the Lord be with all the pilots I have known over the years and especially those I have had the opportunity to fly with. :cool:
Now that sounds like a hell of a ride!! We use that range complex out there every once in a while when the NTTR is full up. Those canyons are a ride for sure!! There’s a few videos on YouTube with us running through the Jedi Transition.
 

Tamalewagon

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View attachment 859985

I was flying from LAX to EWR with a whopping 5 passengers in a 737-900.
41,000 ft and a screaming tail wind pushing us along. Some interesting fun facts for those of you who might care while you’re stuck at home. Our indicated airspeed at that altitude was only about 230kts. Our true airspeed corrected for altitude and temperature was 441kts. You can see that in the GPS shot above. The tailwind was pushing hard and bumped our groundspeed up to the 607kts, which is 698.5mph. Flight time was 4 hours and 7 minutes. I was thankful for the quick flight since I left at 10:15pm. We burned just over 20,000lbs of fuel. I can just feel Greta’s displeasure.

I had to stay in that cesspool of Corona for 11 hours, and then flew a whopping 4 passengers back to LAX. This time we were working against the jet stream.
View attachment 859987 View attachment 859988 40,000ft, 238 kts indicated airspeed, 444 kts true airspeed, and 303 kts over the ground. That’s 348.6 mph. It took us 6 hours 10 minutes, and we burned a little over 30,000lbs of fuel. This flight I was in a 737-800. It burns about 2500lbs of fuel a side per hour. The temperature up there was -63 Celsius. The reason we measure fuel in lbs is because the fuel contracts and expands so much with temperature changes. The weight is consistent. We use an average weight of 6lbs for one gallon of jet fuel. We burned 52,000lbs of jet fuel to move 9 pax across the country. That’s 8,667 gallons.
You have the best office in the world!
 

rrrr

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Ron, rrr, may remember my post of my experience in the back seat of an F-106 Delta Dart back in the early 1980s.
Fresno ANG was still flying the Delta Dart. To make a long story short I was rewarded with a back seat ride for helping FANG with an operational readiness exercise flown in R-2508 Complex.
We launched out of Edwards AFB. In less than 5 minutes we were @ 50,000 ft flying west to east in the High Super Sonic Corridor (HSSC).
I looked at the Mach Meter and before I new it we were at 1.7 Mach. Major Tishner showed me the effectiveness of the air brake and and we were suddenly
@1.3 Mach. He let me take the controls. He continued to decelerate and we were soon subsonic and I descended to FL300.
He let me do a few rolls and I continued to descend to 10,000 feet AGL heading for the dunes at the the northern end of Panamint Valley MOA.
The Maj took the controls and proceeded to take me on a most intensive flight at 2,000 feet AGL flying at 600 Knots.
The canyon walls go by fast.
Probably the best back seat ride I have ever had.
May the Lord be with all the pilots I have known over the years and especially those I have had the opportunity to fly with. :cool:

That pegs the cool meter!

I have another history lesson to share. This one is about the plane Hallett Dave took for a ride, and it's a great story.

The F-106 Delta Dart was the 1960s Cold War version of today's F-35, and at the time, the most advanced fighter in the world. It was interfaced with an incredibly advanced computer network, SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment early warning system.

The SAGE network took radar information from the DEW, or Distant Early Warning, string of manned radar sites, picket ships, and the first AWACS aircraft. These were situated above the Arctic Circle from the Aleutian Islands to Greenland. The information was displayed on consoles at giant concrete blockhouse facilities in the northern US and Canada.

The purpose of the network was to scramble the Mach 2+ capable F-106 squadrons, which were armed with air to air missiles carrying 3 to 5 kiloton yield nuclear warheads. The missiles were to be fired into airborne Soviet bomber formations, and take the entire unit out of the air with an atomic blast. The kill zone was about three miles in diameter.

If the radar system picked up bombers inbound to the US from the Soviet Union, the SAGE facilities would be alerted. The console operators would verify the threat was real, establish the bomber formation's flight path, altitude, and speed, and notify the Air Force Strategic Air Command.

SAC was responsible for providing air defenses for the continental United States, as well as being the offensive command that supplied nuclear weapon response to any attack on the US by the Soviet Union. The arsenal consisted of hundreds of heavy bombers, including the gigantic Convair B-36 and the world's first jet powered heavy bomber, the Boeing B-52.

Once the F-106 squadrons were airborne, the SAGE system uplinked data about the attackers to each airplane. The information detailed the flight path, altitude, speed, and numbers of Soviet bombers in the formations. Crunching the numbers for this information required the use of the most advanced and powerful data processing equipment in existence at the time.

After takeoff, the F-106s were placed on autopilot, and the SAGE computers actually flew each individual plane to intercept the Soviet threat. Once the plane was in the air, the pilot simply monitored the aircraft's systems. This level of automation sophistication was unprecedented.

The threat of nuclear war was very real in the years following WWII up to the collapse of the communist countries beginning in 1989. Fortunately the SAGE system was never placed into action.

This is a photo of the Air Force technicians monitoring the SAGE radar systems.


170717_v40qk_rci-m-blue-room_sn635.jpg


A graphic that illustrates how the system worked:

https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fthe-drive-cms-content-staging%2Fmessage-editor%252F1552607614209-asdadadsd.jpg


More reading:

 
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Sleek Chode

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Mach 1.2 in a slicked out F-18 going downhill out over the Arizona desert. We came into the break exceedingly fast into Yuma and had to explain to the base CO why we were dipshits. 😁🤘 He didn’t like the excuse “because I’m retiring in two days sir?”. Haha That was a long ride back to Miramar in a duty van....hahaha
 
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mjc

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All the airlines are in the process of making drastic cuts and parking airplanes. You’re going to see a reduction of 70-80% of flights over the next two months and probably even longer. There are hundreds of airplanes just parked on runways at several major airports around the country. This is about as bad as the industry has ever seen. The bailout bill is guaranteeing my job until sept 30th. After that, I’ll probably be wondering who is hiring around here...

I can find out about the job my son was offered. He was to go and run through the systems on the stored planes. They would run through each plane and just keep doing them over and over. I think it was south of Phoenix.
 

traquer

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That is so awesome! I love history and planes. Never knew anything about this program until now.

Another thing that blew my mind was when I found out that auto-land technology has been in planes for like 30+ years. I was reading an article the other day about how the 757 was and still is the best airliner from a performance and handling point of view. Always loved the way they look.


That pegs the cool meter!

I have another history lesson to share. This one is about the plane Hallett Dave took for a ride, and it's a great story.

The F-106 Delta Dart was the 1960s Cold War version of today's F-35, and at the time, the most advanced fighter in the world. It was interfaced with an incredibly advanced computer network, SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment early warning system.

 

Lunatic Fringe

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268 MPH on the Maglev train in Shanghai China.
The best part is when you pass the train running the opposite direction on the set of rails alongside.
The air concussion makes a pretty loud bang and shakes the train.
 

Sleek-Jet

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That pegs the cool meter!

I have another history lesson to share. This one is about the plane Hallett Dave took for a ride, and it's a great story.

The F-106 Delta Dart was the 1960s Cold War version of today's F-35, and at the time, the most advanced fighter in the world. It was interfaced with an incredibly advanced computer network, SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment early warning system.

The SAGE network took radar information from the DEW, or Distant Early Warning, string of manned radar sites, picket ships, and the first AWACS aircraft. These were situated above the Arctic Circle from the Aleutian Islands to Greenland. The information was displayed on consoles at giant concrete blockhouse facilities in the northern US and Canada.

The purpose of the network was to scramble the Mach 2+ capable F-106 squadrons, which were armed with air to air missiles carrying 3 to 5 kiloton yield nuclear warheads. The missiles were to be fired into airborne Soviet bomber formations, and take the entire unit out of the air with an atomic blast. The kill zone was about three miles in diameter.

If the radar system picked up bombers inbound to the US from the Soviet Union, the SAGE facilities would be alerted. The console operators would verify the threat was real, establish the bomber formation's flight path, altitude, and speed, and notify the Air Force Strategic Air Command.

SAC was responsible for providing air defenses for the continental United States, as well as being the offensive command that supplied nuclear weapon response to any attack on the US by the Soviet Union. The arsenal consisted of hundreds of heavy bombers, including the gigantic Convair B-36 and the world's first jet powered heavy bomber, the Boeing B-52.

Once the F-106 squadrons were airborne, the SAGE system uplinked data about the attackers to each airplane. The information detailed the flight path, altitude, speed, and numbers of Soviet bombers in the formations. Crunching the numbers for this information required the use of the most advanced and powerful data processing equipment in existence at the time.

After takeoff, the F-106s were placed on autopilot, and the SAGE computers actually flew each individual plane to intercept the Soviet threat. Once the plane was in the air, the pilot simply monitored the aircraft's systems. This level of automation sophistication was unprecedented.

The threat of nuclear war was very real in the years following WWII up to the collapse of the communist countries beginning in 1989. Fortunately the SAGE system was never placed into action.

This is a photo of the Air Force technicians monitoring the SAGE radar systems.


170717_v40qk_rci-m-blue-room_sn635.jpg


A graphic that illustrates how the system worked:

https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fthe-drive-cms-content-staging%2Fmessage-editor%252F1552607614209-asdadadsd.jpg


More reading:


I had the chance to fly with a retired SAC F-106 driver. He had some interesting stories, but the one that stick with me is this;. If the SAGE operator wasn't carefully, they would crank in a new course and the airplane would turn so quick the pilot would bang his helmet on the canopy.

I always thought that was funny.
 

Bigbore500r

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268 MPH on the Maglev train in Shanghai China.
The best part is when you pass the train running the opposite direction on the set of rails alongside.
The air concussion makes a pretty loud bang and shakes the train.
It’s mind blowing that China has 268mph trains, but also eat beagles. WTF
 

Lunatic Fringe

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It’s mind blowing that China has 268mph trains, but also eat beagles. WTF

Saw some different foods over there for sure. If I ate Beagle it wasn't in a picture on the menu.
We did try this drink though and it tasted pretty much like you'd think by looking at what's in the jar.
IMG_20181006_133917271.jpg
 

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View attachment 859985

I was flying from LAX to EWR with a whopping 5 passengers in a 737-900.
41,000 ft and a screaming tail wind pushing us along. Some interesting fun facts for those of you who might care while you’re stuck at home. Our indicated airspeed at that altitude was only about 230kts. Our true airspeed corrected for altitude and temperature was 441kts. You can see that in the GPS shot above. The tailwind was pushing hard and bumped our groundspeed up to the 607kts, which is 698.5mph. Flight time was 4 hours and 7 minutes. I was thankful for the quick flight since I left at 10:15pm. We burned just over 20,000lbs of fuel. I can just feel Greta’s displeasure.

I had to stay in that cesspool of Corona for 11 hours, and then flew a whopping 4 passengers back to LAX. This time we were working against the jet stream.
View attachment 859987 View attachment 859988 40,000ft, 238 kts indicated airspeed, 444 kts true airspeed, and 303 kts over the ground. That’s 348.6 mph. It took us 6 hours 10 minutes, and we burned a little over 30,000lbs of fuel. This flight I was in a 737-800. It burns about 2500lbs of fuel a side per hour. The temperature up there was -63 Celsius. The reason we measure fuel in lbs is because the fuel contracts and expands so much with temperature changes. The weight is consistent. We use an average weight of 6lbs for one gallon of jet fuel. We burned 52,000lbs of jet fuel to move 9 pax across the country. That’s 8,667 gallons.

What is considered an unsafe air speed from a structural airframe standpoint?
 

Trash

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What is considered an unsafe air speed from a structural airframe standpoint?

Depends on the aircraft and altitude. In the case from post 1 it is about 250 KIAS or about M .805 or so.
 

MeCasa16

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What is considered an unsafe air speed from a structural airframe standpoint?

It depends on the airplane, but the 737 is typically hitting the max airspeed (red line) at about .83 of Mach. A lot of jets can get closer to Mach, some business jets even up to .93 Mach. It is typical for us to cruise at .80 or less.

As the plane gets higher, the window of safe speed gets smaller. When we are at our maximum altitude, which is FL410 (41,000ft above sea level), the window of safe airspeed gets much smaller. You can see that window on our speed tape (airspeed indicator). I don’t have a picture on my iPad, but you can see it on the pic in my previous post.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

ChevelleSB406

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There's nothing better than a jet propelled daycruiser for converting gasoline to noise.

Oh yeah, I got that down to a science, I should name my jet day cruiser "Entropy". The chevelle does 120 in the quarter mile in 11 seconds, speedometer stops at 85 or something and hasn't been re-geared for the rear end. I haven't done anything stupid on the freeway since I was a dumb teenager, but before I geared the car, I would shift into 3rd at 100mph or so, I have ran third gear out past that in car that no way should be sustaining speed at that point with sloppy suspension and brakes.

In a boat, my buddies flat has taken me triple digits and got there in a stupid small amount of time.

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