Ok, let’s get this out of the way to start – I’m crap at the guitar. It’s often said that Jimmy Page’s renditions of “Stairway to Heaven” were known to bring people to tears. Well, mine did, too. But while playing the guitar I met some great players, and learnt one very important lesson – no matter what, occasionally you’ll be the best.
What’s that got to do with the SR-71? Well, I’m going to do a couple of articles on the Blackbird, and I’m sure that if you’ve spent any time breathing in the last forty years you’ll know it’s a legend. But before I delve into tedious details on air speed and altitude, I thought I’d share this article which I received as an email because it reminds me of my guitar lesson. I believe this was written by Brian Schul about an incident while he and Walter Watson, training in their SR-71, listened to their radio.
We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a read-out of his ground speed.
Center replied: “November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground.”
Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the “Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots ground speed.” replied Center.
Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren.
Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radio. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check.” Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a read-out? Then I got it. Ol’ Dusty was making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knew what true speed was. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. The reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion was, “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”
I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done—in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that Walt and I developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.
Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it—the click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew.
Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke:
“Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?”
There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request.
“Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”
I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.”
For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A. came back with, “Roger that Aspen. Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.” It had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on that frequency were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work. We never heard another transmission all the way to the coast. For just one day, it truly was fun being the fastest guys out there
So there you have it, an awesome airplane and a sense of humor. Of course, unlike my guitar playing, the SR-71 was always good.
Have you ever had one of those moments? A time when you were, if only for a minute, king of the hill?
Cheers!
(Images courtesy of Wikipedia)
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the cockpit of that Hornet pilot when he heard that Blackbird reading!!! I’m sure it completely ruined that fighter jockey’s day.
That’s a great, great story, Nigel, thanks for sharing that excerpt.
I can’t think of any examples of when I was “The Best” really, although there’s one thing I’m particularly and perversely proud of in the way that only nerds can be proud. I was editing a pharmaceutical brochure, and I was pretty sure that the period in a particular sentence had been set as an italic period rather than roman (this was a design layout rather than a typeset manuscript). I was probably one of the few people on earth who would have noticed and/or cared, but I wanted to check anyway. I went to the graphic artist to ask about it and he enlarged the layout, and sure enough, that period was italicized. So he changed it to roman type.
He thought I was out of my mind—which is not untrue, but I was still right about that period.
Hi Madame Weebles, or should I call you The Punctuator?
Ha, yeah, I bet that was one sore Navy pilot that day.
You certainly should get a mention in the Annuals of Punctuation and Typography for spotting an italic full stop. If that isn’t an actual publication I may start one in your honor. It gets me when I see text that has (say) an italic open quote and a normal closing quote. You’re certainly king of the punctuation for the day.
Cheers!
What a great story! And the cool aircraft pics only make it better. 🙂 I can’t think of any time I’ve ever been the “best” unless it was something like Mme Weebles’ story, back in my graphic arts days.
Jennette, how can you say that? Spotting Uranium ore for sale on Amazon put you straight to the top of the “mystery shopper” list for me 😀
Cheers!
Nigel, I am Queen of the hill when I sing in the shower. Unfortunately, the sound of my voice makes the water stop.
Cool story, love it when the mighty ones I am in awe of unleash their humour and come down to earth with the rest of us. Thanks for sharing.
Queen of the hill … hum, sorry about that, “King” of the hill wasn’t exactly all inclusive, was it? I’ll try harder next time.
Singing in the shower sounds like a great place to be best 🙂
Cheers!
I love it – both the Blackbird and the story! I would’ve loved to have been behind the scenes at the Centre, watching the controllers trying to keep straight faces. And it would’ve been fun to watch the poor Navy pilot shrivel, as well…
I’ve been “king of the hill” in various sporting events, but there’s not much triumph in it. When you’re an amateur, you know there’s always somebody better than you, but they just didn’t happen to attend that day. When you play with the top class of competitors, you know winning at that level is only a matter of who had the best mental game or fluke of luck that day.
One of Canada’s top archers was ranked #1 in the qualifying rounds of the World Archery Championships in Beijing in 2001. Once, just once, I beat her in competition and took the gold (just a local shoot, not an important competition). Total fluke – she had an exceptionally bad day and I had an exceptionally good one. I was king of the hill for a moment, but I certainly didn’t have any illusions about who was the better archer. 🙂
Hi Diane
Yeah, I’m sure that eventually everyone except that Navy pilot got to have a laugh. He must feel cursed though, I mean, what’s the odds?
I didn’t know you were an archer. Not that it makes a lot of difference, I’ll just remember to address you an awful lot more respectfully from now on 🙂 And beating a #1 World Archery Championship archer? Yeah, that totally marks you as the best, even if she did go on to fluke her way into Beijing (which is a joke, ok, just in case said #1 archer is thinking of impaling me with a longbow).
Are we allowed to call you Robin-ess Hood?
Cheers!
You can call me anything you want; just don’t call me late for dinner. 🙂 But you probably don’t want to make any sudden loud noises when I’m at full draw…
Hi Nigel. Those SR-71s were filled with fascinating engineering solutions to some outlandish challenges.
I’m not very competitive by nature except with myself. I’ve done OK in pistol competition and in martial arts but my favorite incident of “number-oneness” was achieved by cheating. Some visitors to a small base were practicing skeet shooting. The skeet was being tossed from a high cliff over the Atlantic. They were good shots and nothing was getting by them. I had seen skeet shot there before and I knew that any missed pigeons would brake up when they descended to a certain level almost even with the cliff. I walked up and they invited me to take a turn in a challenging tone. I had easily shot the best scores on rifle and pistol tests and they were hoping to outdo me with shotguns. I had told them that I never shot shotguns. I told them I would be glad to take a shot. I asked for one skeet to be tossed as I drew my 9MM S&W. The three gentlemen gave me a “yea sure” look and after I insisted they launched a pigeon. I waited for the right moment and fired at the pigeon. I’m sure I missed but thanks to the wind at the edge of the cliff the pigeon broke up right on time. The were stunned. I looked at them with disgust and said “you guys need to stop &^%@$&+ around and get serious with your training.” I turned and walked away. A couple of days latter. They had another session and one of them missed a couple of times and they figured out my scam but I enjoyed those two days of them looking at me as if I were Christ incarnate.
That’s a classic story, Holmes. I particularly like the “and get serious with your training” part. It’s especially funny that they hadn’t noticed the same break-up purely because they were good enough that nothing got by them.
Cheers!
I’m never tired of reading about the Blackbird. Keep them stories coming, Nigel!
And about feeling “like a boss”: One of my best moments was during a music rehearsal at my University. I only had few months of bass-playing experience, but I tried to compensate that by studying hard my parts.
A very big concert was being planned in my campus, and a famous singer was invited to perform onstage. She closed her act with her most famous song, and our music teachers did a sumptuous arrangement that involved not only her own band, but the university’s band where I played, AND our 43-voices choir. We were about 57 people onstage, plus one trembling bassist.
During the rehearsal I was so nervous being the rookie among those veterans that I just opted to keep my eyes on the score and play my parts without caring of what could be happening elsewhere. Halfway during the song, the singer looked at me, gave me a quick thumbs-up, and kept singing. WTF?
When the song ended, I noticed there were embarassed faces everywhere. Obviously, something had gone terribly wrong. I was freaked out! I was so scared with the idea of blowing it that I played without listening to anyone else but me. Did I played it so bad?
In that moment, the singer said out loud: “Let’s give it for our bassist, who was the only one who didn’t get lost!!” And a loud clapping followed, directed to me.
-Insert “I have no idea of what’s going on” face here-
What happened was that her band wasn’t aware of the new arrangement, and got confused midsong. The choir conductor wasn’t prepared for a rehearsal with a full band, so he also missed his cue. And my band was even more confused, since both conductors were entirely off their marks.
The only ones who didn’t got lost were the singer and me! I was so immersed reading my score I didn’t listened to the general chaos that was going on. But she kept singing using my notes, and when the conductors realized that, they both locked in with me. The artist’s musicians noticed that and started following my bass until the end of the song.
So there I was, a rookie among musical giants, directing almost 60 people with my bass without knowing it. When I realized what happened, the stage fright evaporated and my smile was soooo big I could have lit the entire theatre. 😀
Alex, that’s an awesome story. I think I’d have freaked out when the singer gave the thumbs up.
I was going to run a piece on education tomorrow, but I might just re-run your comment. Hope that’s ok.
Cheers!